Adam Savage reviewed William Gurstelle’s fun-with-flammables book, The Practical Pyromaniac: Build Fire Tornadoes, One-Candlepower Engines, Great Balls of Fire, and More Incendiary Devices
, for The Wall Street Journal.
I have proof that we are not so far advanced as we would like to imagine, we humans. We may drive to work in hybrid, air-conditioned cars, eat hydroponically grown tomatoes on our salad and have the ability to instantly listen to any song in the history of music, but we are not as far from the roving bands on the veldt as we hope. My evidence: fire.
You need only see humans’ reactions to fire, in every form, to comprehend its import to us on a cellular level. Somewhere deep in our amygdalas we know how powerful our mastery over this primal force is, and how much that mastery separates us from all other living things.
Children are especially connected to this fascination. I see my boys (12-year-old twins) playing with dinner candles just as I did at their age, with the same rapt fascination. I tell them to stop, just like my parents did—it’s in the rulebook.
Read an excerpt from The Practical Pyromaniac.
Adam Savage: Young Men and Fire