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ameyawarde's review against another edition
4.0
This was a quick and interesting book about drinking habits across the world throughout time! I was listening to it via audiobook before bed and I think i must have been especially sleepy around this time and I feel like I didn't retain much of it, so it's one i'll probably pick up again sometime to try to retain more!
chelseacrystal's review against another edition
I think this book exposed just how little conjecture I can tolerate. I like cold, hard facts and that isn’t this book at all. It’s a lot of “perhaps!” and “maybe we can assume…”
The tone is upbeat and light but this book just isn’t for me. I’m still open to reading Mark’s other works though.
The tone is upbeat and light but this book just isn’t for me. I’m still open to reading Mark’s other works though.
unladylike's review against another edition
3.0
This book was, as I'd expected from the reviews, very British and full of little jokes. It actually ended up teaching me a lot of fascinating things I was previously ignorant of, and even influenced my current thinking about drinking. I have some psychological/philosophical questions/ideas based on the book, such as, "Will alcohol affect my health more negatively if I believe it to be hurting me?" One caveat or Content Warning I'll offer is that the author makes some casual racist jokes in ways that probably get a chuckle from his white British audiences. He also came across to me as a bit of a pompous, classist asshole. In talking about differences between lower class vs ruling/owning class drinking attitudes, he seems to default to siding with the landlords that want to crush any rebellion. Now I'll paste my notes, which include the specifics of the racist jokes.
This quote appears both at the start and end of the book: “The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites and says yes.” - William James
Interesting psychological fact: people will behave differently based on their cultural associations with one type of drink vs another even though all alcoholic beverages contain the same active inebriating ingredient - ethanol. E.g. people swearing tequila is an upper but all others are downers. Somber, sophisticated behavior associated with wine or martinis, etc. More generally, if you come from a culture where alcohol is meant to make you more aggressive, you’ll become more aggressive. If you come from a culture where it’s meant to be religious, you’ll behave religiously. If a sociologist gives you (even non-alcoholic beer) drinks and tells you it’s a study about alcohol and libido, everyone becomes libidinous.
“Transitional drinking” is what people do in various cultures to mark the transition between one part of the day to the other. Some have drank to mark the *start* of work time, whereas. For most of human history, political leaders have been buried with items for continuing to drink alcohol post-mortem. The only two cultures that were not big drinkers - North America and Australia - were colonized by cultures that were.
In Mesopotamia the most ancient civilization (acknowledged by Western historians as of the writing of this book in 2017), bartending and beer making were exclusively the jobs of women. However, some of the evidence that says this is in the form of laws against being overcharged for a beer, with the punishment being death by drowning for the woman in charge.
At the halfway point, I’ve noticed at least two racist jokes made by the author. When talking about cup-bearers in ancient Egypt and Atila the Hun’s era, he says something like, “at the bottom of the classes, you might be served by a Black Moor that you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley,” playing up the very harmful stereotype that Black Men Are Scary. Ugh. In the chapter on drunkenness in the Middle East, he cracks a joke along the lines of “their desire for alcohol was as large as their names were unspellable,” perpetuating Anglo-Saxon supremacy and the suppression, fear or bewilderment, and Othering of names from Arabic (and African, among others) places. Not to mention referring to prostitutes as “degenerates.”
The Benedictine abbeys set a ration/limit of one gallon of wine per person per day! So by that standard, even if I were to drink about a bottle of wine every night, I'd still be consuming less alcohol than a whole monastic order!
This quote appears both at the start and end of the book: “The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites and says yes.” - William James
Interesting psychological fact: people will behave differently based on their cultural associations with one type of drink vs another even though all alcoholic beverages contain the same active inebriating ingredient - ethanol. E.g. people swearing tequila is an upper but all others are downers. Somber, sophisticated behavior associated with wine or martinis, etc. More generally, if you come from a culture where alcohol is meant to make you more aggressive, you’ll become more aggressive. If you come from a culture where it’s meant to be religious, you’ll behave religiously. If a sociologist gives you (even non-alcoholic beer) drinks and tells you it’s a study about alcohol and libido, everyone becomes libidinous.
“Transitional drinking” is what people do in various cultures to mark the transition between one part of the day to the other. Some have drank to mark the *start* of work time, whereas. For most of human history, political leaders have been buried with items for continuing to drink alcohol post-mortem. The only two cultures that were not big drinkers - North America and Australia - were colonized by cultures that were.
In Mesopotamia the most ancient civilization (acknowledged by Western historians as of the writing of this book in 2017), bartending and beer making were exclusively the jobs of women. However, some of the evidence that says this is in the form of laws against being overcharged for a beer, with the punishment being death by drowning for the woman in charge.
At the halfway point, I’ve noticed at least two racist jokes made by the author. When talking about cup-bearers in ancient Egypt and Atila the Hun’s era, he says something like, “at the bottom of the classes, you might be served by a Black Moor that you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley,” playing up the very harmful stereotype that Black Men Are Scary. Ugh. In the chapter on drunkenness in the Middle East, he cracks a joke along the lines of “their desire for alcohol was as large as their names were unspellable,” perpetuating Anglo-Saxon supremacy and the suppression, fear or bewilderment, and Othering of names from Arabic (and African, among others) places. Not to mention referring to prostitutes as “degenerates.”
The Benedictine abbeys set a ration/limit of one gallon of wine per person per day! So by that standard, even if I were to drink about a bottle of wine every night, I'd still be consuming less alcohol than a whole monastic order!
uditnair24's review against another edition
4.0
Basically wherever and whenever humans have lived they have gathered together to get intoxicated. As someone has beautifully said- 'Sobriety diminishes,discriminates and says no; drunkenness expands,unites and says yes.'
This book is a laugh riot. I mean the way the author has presented it is hilarious and to the point.
This book is a laugh riot. I mean the way the author has presented it is hilarious and to the point.