Penguin presents the audiobook model of A BRIEF HISTORY of Drunkenness by Tag Forsyth, go through by Sh*tfaced Shakespeare’s Richard Hughes.

Nearly every culture on earth has drink, and where there’s drink there’s drunkenness. However in every age and in every place drunkenness can be a bit different. It can be religious, it can be sexual, it can be the work of kings or the comfort of peasants. It can be an offering to the ancestors, or a means of marking the end of a day’s work. It can send you to about A Short History of Drunkenness sleep, or send out you into fight.

A BRIEF HISTORY of Drunkenness traces humankind’s romance with booze from our primate ancestors through to Prohibition, answering every feasible question along the way: What did people drink? How much? Who do the drinking? Of the numerous possible reasons, why? Along the way, find out about the Neolithic Shamans, who drank to communicate with the spirit world (no pun meant), marvel at how Greeks got giddy and Romans got rat-arsed, and find out how bars in the open West were by no means that can compare with in the films.

This is a history from the world at its inebriated best.