Cooking started out straightforward: put food over a fire and turn it occasionally until it looks and smells ready. What have people done when fuel wasn’t available, and how did they improvise when a source of free heat presented itself? People have cooked using heat from volcanoes, hot springs, automobile engines, household appliances, weapons, and other ingenious methods. This is a light-hearted history of culinary innovation from prehistory to the present day.

Richard Foss has been writing professionally since 1986, when he started reviewing restaurants for a Los Angeles newspaper. Since then he has contributed to over fifty different publications, including the Encyclopedia of World Food Cultures and Oxford Companion to Sweets. His book on the history of rum was released by Reaktion Books in April 2012. Food in the Air and Space; The Surprising History of Food and Drink in the Skies, was released in December 2014. He is now working on a history of immigrant cuisines in California in conjunction with exhibition he is curating, “Cooking Up a New West” which is scheduled to open at the Autry Museum in 2022.