A Short History of Drunkeness by Mark Forsyth

[Drunk Monk]

By short, it's less than 250 pages, and it encompasses many ancient cultures, although mostly European, with nods to China (weak) and Aztecs (surprising). Forsyth is a tad smarmy in his tone, which bugged me at first, but I got used to it later. He's got a lot of funny factoids about world history. His chapters on the Wild West, symposiums, gin in the UK, and ale were particularly revealing. In the end, I found it an enjoyable light read, a book gifted to me that has been sitting on my nightstand since xmas.