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A Short History of Drunkenness: How, Why, Where, and When Humankind Has Gotten Merry from the Stone Age to the Present
A Short History of Drunkenness: How, Why, Where, and When Humankind Has Gotten Merry from the Stone Age to the Present
A Short History of Drunkenness: How, Why, Where, and When Humankind Has Gotten Merry from the Stone Age to the Present
Audiobook5 hours

A Short History of Drunkenness: How, Why, Where, and When Humankind Has Gotten Merry from the Stone Age to the Present

Written by Mark Forsyth

Narrated by Simon Vance

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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About this audiobook

From the internationally bestselling author of The Etymologicon, a lively and fascinating exploration of how, throughout history, each civilization has found a way to celebrate, or to control, the eternal human drive to get sloshed

Almost every culture on earth has drink, and where there's drink there's drunkenness. But in every age and in every place drunkenness is a little bit different. It can be religious, it can be sexual, it can be the duty of kings or the relief of peasants. It can be an offering to the ancestors, or a way of marking the end of a day's work. It can send you to sleep, or send you into battle.

Making stops all over the world, A Short History of Drunkenness traces humankind's love affair with booze from our primate ancestors through to the twentieth century, answering every possible question along the way: What did people drink? How much? Who did the drinking? Of the many possible reasons, why? On the way, learn about the Neolithic Shamans, who drank to communicate with the spirit world (no pun intended), marvel at how Greeks got giddy and Sumerians got sauced, and find out how bars in the Wild West were never quite like in the movies.

This is a history of the world at its inebriated best.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateSep 30, 2018
ISBN9781541446403
A Short History of Drunkenness: How, Why, Where, and When Humankind Has Gotten Merry from the Stone Age to the Present

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Reviews for A Short History of Drunkenness

Rating: 3.817460365079365 out of 5 stars
4/5

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Entertaining and informative. Very funny in places. Would enjoying seeing Ken Burns work it into video form.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I was really enjoying this book, and accepting that what I was learning was necessarily going to be limited by the short framework of the book, until I got to the chapter on prohibition, which left out so much that it rendered the insistence that prohibition was successful - very odd to say the least. It took away from my previous enjoyment of the book, because it indicated to me that any other conclusions he’d drawn from history were likely to be equally full of misunderstandings.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I think this might have been designed as a stocking-filler book. Jocular and light-hearted tone, but it is actually a proper book and even has references if you want to read more. It’s arranged as a series of essays on various drinking cultures down through time. It’s a bit like a having a chat about drinking with an amusing chap who has had no more than one and a half glasses of wine.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I love Mark Forsyth's writing. I think I've read (and own) everything he's written and I've yet to be let down. He's got the dry, British humor in spades and his writing is always excellent. His original bibliography focused on etymology, but he's lately broken out into short, but focused, histories. Forsyth makes it clear from the start that this is not a comprehensive history of drunkenness; that would be a comprehensive history of humanity. But he does break it down into a very easy to follow, somewhat linear timeline, with each chapter focused on a specific culture, or age. I don't want to spoil anything for anyone, but it turns out ancient Greeks got a bad rap; when it comes to partying they had nothing on ancient Egyptians. Or late 19th/early 20th century Russians. Holy crap. The book ends in more or less modern times, but Forsyth does revisit America in the last chapter; specifically Prohibition and Did it work?. Half my family was in Chicago during Prohibition and the other half was in Florida, with a constant stream of 'revenuers' and bootleggers coming through the tiny fishing village called home, so I'm not sure I entirely buy his premise that Prohibition was a success. On the other hand, my family's history would give me exactly the skewed perspective that would make me dubious. No matter what my opinion is, his take on Prohibition was fascinating and (to me) an entirely new way of viewing the 18th amendment experiment. But the best part, the very best part of the book, for me, is something only a few here will immediately appreciate, and it's this, from a quote in the chapter on the American Wild West: "The saturnalia commenced on Christmas evening, at the Humboldt [saloon]..."
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Amusing short essays on how different areas of the world and time periods handled the inevitable drunkenness of it's members. Sometimes celebrated as nearness to gods at others reviled as being bestial, drunkenness is the cause for passionate reactions. The book is mostly amusingly informative - my favorite Odin returning the Mead of Poetry to the gods. The author is somewhat prone to judgemental commentary not always supported by what he has written.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a brief, but fairly detailed, look at how alcohol has been used and regarded through the ages. From prehistory to America’s Prohibition, the 18 chapters tell us how alcohol has been used to see religious visions, to go to work, to end work, to discuss important issues and decisions, to communicate with their ancestors, and just about everything else. Most cultures have used alcohol, and it’s not limited to humans- naturally fermented fruit is enjoyed by both monkeys and elephants. Forsyth’s prose is witty and irreverent, and a fast read; I read the 230 pages in two evenings- although it’s not a book that demands to be read at once; it’s one of those that you can put down and pick up again at any point. As nonfiction, it’s quite light. Sometimes the wit seems too much, as if he was afraid to write a sentence with no punchline, but all in all it’s very enjoyable. And he has done his homework and there’s a bibliography to prove it. So if you want to know who the Norse god of drunkenness was (it’s Odin) or how the gin craze started (it has to do with grain excesses), this is the book for you. Four stars.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    3.5 StarsMore entertainment than history, but a fun, quick and easy read, for anyone interested in the brief history of drunkenness. Penguin First to Read Galley
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    An exploration of drinking customs among various societies around the world throughout history.The author writes as if, well, he's had one too many at times. The style is conversational, abrupt, a bit crass, and sometimes foul. At times, detail gets overlooked; at other times, we get plenty of detail. The overgeneralizations at times are a bit stunning...and might concern many readers, for if these historical bits are getting treated casually, how much confidence can there be in what is described in detail?In terms of what I can speak toward in terms of specialty, in terms of the Bible, the section was not terrible; the point about shekar not being beer is highly contestible, since shekar is mentioned frequently in the OT, we've found plenty of breweries in archaeological expeditions, which makes sense, considering the associations with Egypt...and in his source area it seems Alter is his only recent source, which makes the whole thing seem a bit suspect. Based on that, I'd take many of the claims with a grain of salt. One does get a picture of the prevalence of drink and what it has meant in various societies, even if one does not sign on to the author's attempt to justify its prevalence as inevitability.**--galley received as part of early review program