An Homage To Alcohol
If you rang in the New Year, or you celebrate any other holiday or birthday with a raised glass, or even share a toast with a raised alcoholic drink, Edward Slingerland would like you to show proper reverence to the liquid in your glass. Alcohol is not just a tool for celebrating the end of a year, whether pleasant or miserable. It doesn’t merely give you and your friends a pleasant communal buzz. No way! What you hold in your glass is the elixir that started civilization, kids…and has been essential ever since in enabling human societies to flourish (while, admittedly, enjoying that pleasant buzz). In his book Drunk (2022), a witty and erudite homage to alcohol, Slingerland offers a novel explanation to an old evolutionary puzzle: Why do we keep drinking? “Humans are the only species that deliberately, systematically, and regularly gets drunk,” he writes. “The rarity of this behavior is not surprising, given its costs.” The downsides ...