A SHORT HISTORY OF DRUNKENNESS
International best-selling author Mark Forsyth, joins Big Blend Radio’s Happy Hour and chats about his new book, “A SHORT HISTORY OF DRUNKENNESS: How, Why, Where, and When Humankind Has Gotten Merry from the Stone Age to the Present.”
What better way to celebrate than learning exactly why we use alcohol as a means of merriment?
In his new book “A SHORT HISTORY OF DRUNKENNESS: How, Why, Where, and When Humankind Has Gotten Merry from the Stone Age to the Present,” author Mark Forsyth aptly tackles the history of humankind’s love of drinking. The ancient Persians would debate all political questions twice: once drunk and once sober. The Vikings believed mead was the source of poetry. The Aztec punishment for drunkenness was public strangulation. And eighteenth-century Londoners were forced to buy their gin from a mechanical cat. Throughout history, each civilization has found a way to celebrate, or to control, the eternal human drive to get sloshed.
A SHORT HISTORY OF DRUNKENNESS traces humankind’s love affair with booze, from our primate ancestors 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?
In this entertaining and well-researched book, Forsyth blends history and humor to explore how our love of overindulgence, as well as our effort to prevent it, connects us all across culture and time. Perfectly delivered and packed with wisdom and wit, Forsyth’s A SHORT HISTORY OF DRUNKENNESS is a history of the world at its inebriated best.
Born in London in 1977, Mark Forsyth (a.k.a The Inky Fool) was given a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary as a christening present and has never looked back. His book The Etymologicon was a Sunday Times number one bestseller and his TED Talk “What’s a Snollygoster?” has had more than half a million views. He has also written a specially commissioned essay, “The Unknown Unknown,” for Independent Booksellers Week and the introduction for the new edition of the Collins English Dictionary. He lives in London with his dictionaries, and blogs at www.blog.inkyfool.com.
