COURTIER AND THE HERETIC, THE

A master historian's spirited survey of humanity's strategies for tapping sun energy, past and future. We don't often recognize the humble activity of cooking for the revolutionary cultural adaptation that it is. But when the hearth fires started burning in the Paleolithic, humankind broadened the exploitation of food and initiated an avalanche of change. And we don't often associate cooking with drilling for oil, but both are innovations that allow us to tap the sun energy accumulated in organic matter.