The pleasure of the micro-history is the chance to view the complex chaos of the past through a narrow lens. In A Short History of Drunkenness, Mark Forsyth takes the tendency to endearing extremes: The very origin of the species, he reports, comes down to our love for hooch…A little hyperbole is all part of the fun on this entertaining bar-hop through the past 10,000 years. The tone evokes a cheeky Oxford professor regaling us over a pint of stout in the pub, and Forsyth revels in his Britishisms as much as any P. G. Wodehouse character…But there is always some serious history slipped in with the joking. Almost every human society, Forsyth shows, has created an elaborate web of rules around drinking and drunkenness. Even Attila the Hun had strict protocol at his feasts, with guests toasting one another in order of rank. And those taboos and rituals reveal a great deal about the broader culture.
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.
1127464029
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.
A Short History of Drunkenness: How, Why, Where, and When Humankind Has Gotten Merry from the Stone Age to the Present
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.
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.
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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
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Product Details
BN ID: | 2940170548378 |
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Publisher: | Tantor Audio |
Publication date: | 09/30/2018 |
Edition description: | Unabridged |
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