John Maier

Our need to get drunk in company may be innate

Edward Slingerland examines alcohol’s ‘genuine evolutionary puzzle’: if it’s so harmful, why hasn’t its use been eliminated by natural selection over the centuries?

‘The Bacchanal of the Andrians’ by Titian, 1523-6 [Getty Images]

  • Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization

    Edward Slingerland

    Little, Brown, pp. 384, £25

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