Intoxication down the ages

The pub crawl can get a little exhausting, and the reader can get bloated on the relentless whimsy

A SHORT HISTORY OF DRUNKENNESS

How, Why, Where, and When Humankind Has Gotten Merry From the Stone Age to the Present    

Mark Forsyth   

Three Rivers Press

243 pages; $18

The pleasure of the micro-history is the chance to view the complex chaos of the past through a narrow lens. In A Short History of Drunkenness, Mark Forsyth takes the tendency to endearing extremes: The very origin of the species, he reports, comes down to our love for hooch. The first primates that swung down from the forest canopy may have been in search of fermented fruit, kick-starting evolution. Ten million years later,