Review by New York Times Review
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. The first primates that swung down from the forest canopy may have been in search of fermented fruit, kick-starting evolution. Ten million years later, humans turned to agriculture "because we wanted booze" and needed to grow barley. Writing? The ancient Mesopotamians came up with it after using a symbol for kash, or beer, on trading i.o.u.s pressed in clay. Fast-forward a few millenniums and we find that Christianity was such a hit because it used communal wine in its rites. In modern times, George Washington launched his political career by handing out free booze to voters and succeeded on the field after he doubled his men's rations of the hard stuff. The Russian Revolution occurred because the czar banned vodka in 1914: Since the beloved spirit was a staterun business, the treasury went broke in World War I. Why stop there? Perhaps a sequel might suggest that Adolf Hitler's teetotalism put him in a tetchy mood; a relaxing glass of schnapps might have kept him out of Poland. But 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. Prohibition worked "jolly well," people "gettrollied" on "plonk," and there is lots of "guff" around generally. At times, he seems to be channeling Austin Powers: An ancient Egyptian hymn is translated, "Let him drink, let him eat, let him shag." As it happens, far from a crusty don, Forsyth isn't much over 40, according to his bio, and is best known in Britain as a witty etymologist. Another pertinent detail we learn on Page 1 is that the author is - unsurprisingly - not averse to a tipple. In fact, the good folks at AA. will be apoplectic over this book, which suggests that heavy drinking is a basic human need, providing us with relief from the burdens of civilized society and even, for many cultures in history, a glimpse of the divine. Forget the ruined relationships, the disintegrated livers and the car (or horse-riding) accidents. This cheerful acceptance of the bottle may strike more abstemious American readers as another very "British" element. Unlike the hand-wringing that has shadowed the drinking life in the United States, the Brits still tend to have an indulgent attitude to bingeing. This, Forsyth explains, makes them one of history's "wet cultures," in such good company as the Vikings, as opposed to the "dry cultures," whose mildly buzzed denizens drink in "Continental" style, sipping for hour after hour, but in moderation. (Full disclosure: I was raised in Australia, a land so wet it's practically drowning. Down Under gets its very own chapter on its liquor-addled origins as a penal colony, when rum was currency and even inspired a military coup, the Rum Rebellion. It gives one a patriotic glow!) This refreshingly guilt-free account of getting sloshed through the ages is a gift to the chalkboard-writers of dive bars the world over, laced as it is with inspirational quotes about the joys of a snifter. We have the Roman poet Horace writing that "Flowing wine makes verses flow,/And liberates the poor and low" and Benjamin Franklin famously declaring that wine is "proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy." The alcohol lobby would love an Ethiopian proverb that recurs like a mantra: "When there is no beer, there is no work," although the Sumerians were blunter: "Not to know beer is not normal." In the best pop-history tradition, Forsyth also guides us on step-by-step tours of the legendary drinking joints of the past. We learn how to behave in the rowdy taverns of ancient Ur ("the perfect place for the craft-ale snob") and at a Greek Symposium, where the wine poured from the krater bowl was closely regulated by the host, although with mixed success. (The guests might end up running deliriously through the streets, shouting and causing mayhem, in a komos.) We visit a medieval English alehouse and discover that our image is largely culled from romantic novels and cheesy Robin Hood films. Fans of "Westworld" will be distressed to learn, however, that Old West saloons had no swinging batwing doors, while the working girls usually provided nothing saucier than conversation. It's a hectic itinerary. The pub crawl can get a little exhausting, and the reader can get bloated on the relentless whimsy. Some will prefer to dip into chapters at random, jumping from the Old Testament Bible to Ivan the Terrible. 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. One appealing side effect is to suggest how odd our own drinking rules might look to visitors from other eras. The Aztecs encouraged pregnant women to drink a vitamin-rich brew called pulque, and for most of history, a liquid breakfast was considered healthy. In the Middle Ages, it was downright dangerous not to drink beer all day, since the water supply was contaminated. Every possible attitude to inebriation has been tested over the ages. The only constant, perhaps, is that alcohol is a disruptive force that by its very nature defeats efforts to control it, from ancient Roman bans on the debauched Bacchic rites in the first century B.C. to the great American experiment, Prohibition. The bottom line, Forsyth concludes, is that boozy revelries are here to stay, and we might as well embrace them. As the philosopher William James (an American, no less) put it: "Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes." tony perrottet'S latest book, "¡Cuba Libre! Che, Fidel and the Improbable Revolution That Changed World History," will be published in December.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 3, 2018]
Review by Booklist Review
The publicity for this tough little book suggests you accompany it with a double shot of Old Mortality presumably to feel at home with notable lushes of gone times, like Alexander the Great. That's a fine strategy, though we counsel moderation, lest you miss even a little of the insightful nuggets of pop-cultural history on view here. Forsyth, a British word addict, writes a bit like the late Kingsley Amis, and, like Amis, he loves trivia. He mentions the space-shuttle launches with the astronauts hiccup-and-happiness drunk. And he debunks beloved Hollywood lies: Robin Hood and his Merrie Men didn't drink in pubs because there weren't any then. And cowboy saloons didn't have batwing doors: they couldn't lock the place up if they did. He offers pretty convincing proof that Shakespeare was a wine drinker. But then the heavy stuff. Wine came along, for good or ill, with the spread of Christianity. And Confucius insisted on drink protocol for a reason that sounds a little sinister now: formal etiquette rigidly enforced will make people fall into line. Good fun for tipplers.--Crinklaw, Don Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Etymologist Forsyth (The Etymologicon) presents an entertaining jaunt through intoxication over the ages, from prehistoric times to Prohibition, with equal parts enlightening data and delightful color commentary. He takes readers on a tour of an ancient Sumerian tavern (where the law dictated that bartenders failing to give correct change would be executed), and elucidates the differences between inns, taverns, and alehouses in medieval London. He explores religious and cultural rituals related to drinking over the ages, including ancient Egypt's orgiastic Festival of Drunkenness, the Greek symposium, and the Roman convivium, where one's designated seat at the table spoke volumes about one's social status. Forsyth quotes literary sources extensively, including The Epic of Gilgamesh, Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, and Animal Farm, as well as both the Old and New Testaments. While some of the material covered will be familiar, Forsyth also includes some lesser-known details, like the provenance of the phrase "Dutch courage" and the history of the British "Rum Corps" in Australia. Forsyth's clever sense of humor and flair for perceiving subtle historical ironies make for livelier and more amusing reading than any cold recitation of facts. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A popular history of getting soused.Language historian Forsyth (The Elements of Eloquence, 2014, etc.) assembles a brisk, witty, and roughly chronological prcis on drinking cultures and practices around the world since the earliest fizzle of fermentation. Using humor to skim over the violence and sadness of alcohol abuse, the author specializes in snappy summaries and choice anecdotes about the weird and obsessive customs that people have created around the process of getting drunk, with more snark reserved for the teetotalers than the tipplers. Take the ancient Egyptians, who felt it their holy duty to imbibe and cavort to excess, one of many cultures that used alcohol as a means to spiritual elevation. While his coverage can be glib and occasionally unbalancedhe waxes on about Shakespeare's relationship to wine but distills millennia of Middle Eastern intoxication into the quip that, "For a Muslim, drinking is rarely simple"Forsyth's rollicking sketches belie the extensive research that informs them. He offers a solidly embedded history, zooming in on the spaces and objects that have enabled and embodied inebriation across the ages. As with his work in etymology, this book showcases Forsyth's ability to make sense of the court records, wine songs, and snatches of poetry he finds in the textual slag heap. Not surprisingly, much of the story is bound up in religion and the law, and he leverages the anthropological distinction between "wet" and "dry" societies to explain, among other things, the close relationship between prohibitive legislation and widespread drunkenness. Forsyth's account is as ribald and casual as that of a teenage tour guide working for tips, but it's full of good history and good humor. This smart and satisfying generalist history will make you wish the author would sum up every other subject while you bob along the waves of his irreverent, learned wit (preferably with a drink in hand).The ideal companion for an idle hour, like one spent in an airport bar. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
