Monday, July 14, 2008

More on drinking



Having spent three days at the Lake of the Ozarks researching this very topic, I feel compelled to link to this review of Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol. Among the gems:
One of Drink’s most fascinating subplots, as it turns out, is humanity’s apparently universal contempt for water. In ancient Greece, water drinkers “were believed not only to lack passion but also to exude a noxious odor”; in post-WWI France, they were thought to be fat, weak, and pimply—hurtful prejudices that I, having once been publicly berated by an Irishwoman for ordering a pint of water at a pub, can confirm still exist today.

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