Review by Booklist Review
Authors praising booze come up with the damndest things. Did you know that the Mayflower landing at Plymouth Rock was a beer run? (Well, sort of.) Slingerland, though, has no truck with drunky cuteness. He's a scholar, with solid academic credentials and a professorial display of charts and statistics, which readers can comfortably skip but that do provide scientific and historical justification for a wealth of jarring and entertaining statements: "We wouldn't have civilization as we know it without intoxication in some form." That the form was alcoholic largely accounts for the agrarian expansion that created the modern world: got to have something to ferment. Chunks of the study sing the benevolence and importance of the sauce in business, religion, friendship, the arts, and romance--and in escaping what Aldous Huxley called "selfhood and the environment." Yes, alcohol is linked to "liver damage, cancer, self-harm, industrial accidents, poisonings, drownings, and falls," yet evolution, which apparently has beer for breakfast, has been slow to sense real danger. Slingerland, too, prefers not to dwell on it. "The way to God," he quotes the shamans, "is with beer in hand."
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Slingerland (Trying Not to Try), a professor of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia, delivers an entertaining and informative look at the "popularity, persistence, and importance of intoxicants throughout human history." Citing chemical traces of alcohol found on Chinese pot shards from 7000 BCE and peyote buttons carbon-dated to 3700 BCE found in human cave dwellings in Mexico, Slingerland contends that the benefits of intoxication, including boosted creativity, stress relief, and enhanced cooperation, were key to the rise of the "first large-scale societies." He also delves into biology and neuroscience to explain how alcohol's inhibition of the prefrontal cortex helps foster a "childlike creativity and receptiveness in otherwise fully-functional adults," and cites psychological studies showing that moderate intoxication breaks down the social barriers that can prevent people from bonding. Acknowledging that modern distillation techniques and increased social isolation have amplified the dangers of drugs and alcohol, Slingerland suggests ways of "taming Dionysus" such as allowing young adults to sample wine at dinner, so they view it as a "source of aesthetic pleasure" rather than a "forbidden substance." A witty and well-informed narrator, Slingerland ranges across a wide range of academic fields to make his case. Readers will toast this praiseworthy study. (June)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Why do people all over the world use intoxicants that impair thinking and cause long-term health problems? Slingerland (Asian studies, Univ. of British Columbia; Trying Not To Try) attempts to answer this question. His book is international in scope and covers a wide range of topics around this peculiar human behavior and its potential evolutionary or social explanations. He analyzes some widespread theories of drug and alcohol use: "hijack theory" asserts that humans are smart enough to exploit evolution's pleasure systems, while "hangover theory" suggests that we tend to overindulge in substances that, in smaller amounts, would have evolutionary advantages. He also discusses simple functional uses of alcohol, including its ability to kill bacteria in water; for Slingerland, that functional explanation doesn't explain why humans haven't replaced alcohol with, for instance, boiled tea. He proposes that intoxication cools the grip of the prefrontal cortex, allowing a curious and creative childlike mind to wander. There is serious anthropology here, including the tantalizing theory that beer, not bread, was the stimulus for the agricultural revolution. Slingerland's informal, conversational style weaves modern scientific studies with ancient mythology. VERDICT An illuminating yet conversational study that takes an anthropological approach to a widespread and often puzzling human behavior.--Jeffrey Meyer, Iowa Wesleyan Univ.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A spirited look at drinking. A professor of Asian studies at the University of British Columbia, Slingerland draws on archaeology, anthropology, history, neuroscience, psychopharmacology, social psychology, literature, poetry, and genetics to argue--insistently and repetitively-- for the social, cultural, and psychological benefits of getting drunk. "Far from being an evolutionary mistake," he writes, "chemical intoxication helps solve a number of distinctively human challenges: enhancing creativity, alleviating stress, building trust, and pulling off the miracle of getting fiercely tribal primates to cooperate with strangers." He expounds at length on humans' need for creativity, culture, and cooperation, which, he claims, alcohol enhances. "In many ways," he writes, alcohol "is the perfect drug. It is easy to dose, and its cognitive effects stable across individuals. Best of all, these effects wax and wane predictably and are relatively short-lived." Alcohol consumption, he asserts, preceded agriculture and, in fact, "provided the spark that allowed us to form truly large-scale groups, domesticate increasing numbers of plants and animals, accumulate new technologies, and thereby create the sprawling civilizations that have made us the dominant mega-fauna on the planet." While Slingerland concedes that alcohol may have detrimental physical effects, such as liver damage, he asserts that such costs must be weighed against its "venerable role as an aid to creativity, contentment, and social solidarity." The author acknowledges, however, that this solidarity excludes those who do not drink for health or religious reasons and often excludes women, as well. As far as the role of alcohol in sexual assault and rape, Slingerland writes that these unsavory behaviors are "driven by patriarchal or misogynist social norms rather than the ethanol molecule itself." In the final chapter, the author cautions against imbibing distilled spirits and drinking "outside of the traditional context of ritual and social controls," contradicting his earlier assertion that many artists and writers "unleashed" their creativity by drinking hard liquor, alone. A hyperbolic but entertaining defense of intoxication via alcohol. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
