A Short History of Drunkenness

By Mark Forsyth,

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

Book description

THE PERFECT GIFT FOR ANYONE WHO ENJOYS A TIPPLE . . . OR TWO . . . OR TEN!

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. Tracing humankind's love affair…

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Why read it?

1 author picked A Short History of Drunkenness as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Deborah Toner

Author

This is a great one to read in tandem with The Dawn of Everything, as they cover a similarly enormous timespan but in very different ways.

The provocative suggestion that humans might have invented agriculture primarily as a means of having more regular and reliable access to booze was… unexpected! The more modern eras of history are also handled punchily, including some forceful overturning of the most enduring misconceptions about the 1920s prohibition of alcohol in the United States.

Forysth’s telling of human history through our myriad, complicated ways of getting drunk and all the social and legal rules…

From Deborah's 3 favorite reads in 2023.