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wrongtrainrighttime) wrote2017-12-10 06:29 pm
wrongtrainrighttime) wrote2017-12-10 06:29 pm
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A (Brief) History of Vice: How Bad Behavior Built Civilization by Robert Evans
Evans, Robert. A (Brief) History of Vice: How Bad Behavior Built Civilization. Plume, 2016. eBook.
A (Brief) History of Vice is a short look at the history of many vices. Each chapter focuses on a specific "vice", which may be as broad as the practice of prostitution or as specific as the much-rumored salamander brandy of Slovenia. Each chapter describes the vice in question and looks at how it originated and how it existed in ancient societies, usually focusing on how the vice in question helped build those societies. Often this means discussing how the "vice" was incorporated into rituals, religion, the military, and other institutional building blocks of this thing we call civilization.
The best way I can think of to how A (Brief) History of Vice approaches this topic is as a "mosaic." Each of the fifteen chapters provides a very quick overview of a single vice, cramming centuries of history and practice into a few paragraphs. You get a little bit of a lot of things. This is neither a positive nor a negative, it's just the nature of the book: nearly every chapter could easily be a whole book's worth of riveting history and research. This book is a pop history survey, which is both your warning and enticement.
Despite this, A (Brief) History seems to be the result of quite a bit of research. While it lacks the traditional hallmarks of academic research, like footnotes and a list of references, Evans frequently references academic articles, scholarly studies, and personal interviews. It's not clear how much of this material is taken from prior work done for Cracked and how much is brand-new to the book, but I don't think it matters as much as the fact that he has made efforts to include that material. The interview snippets, in particular, are quite interesting. Adding to the primary material is Evans' reports of his personal attempts to recreate ancient methods of getting high. Again, some very interesting stuff.
Another one of those warning/enticement things is that, as the book states right on the cover, Robert Evans is a (now former) editor at Cracked. For those who don't know, Cracked is a humor website publishes listicles, usually focused on pop culture. The Personal Experiences section is a notable exception, in that the listicles are the result of in-depth interviews with people who've lived interesting lives, from traumatic events to unusual jobs (I like this section quite a bit.) I bring this up because this book does, in fact, read like a series of Cracked articles. It has the same casual, joke-filled tone, and each chapter is so discrete that the book might as well be a collection of lengthier-than-usual Cracked articles united by theme. Though Evans has toned down the bro-factor, which I much appreciate.
Overall this was a quick, light, but still interesting read. I learned some things I had not known before. If I have one critique, it's that I wish the conclusion had been much longer because I think what Evans had to say after his adventures was very interesting and I badly wanted to see him explore those ideas in more than a couple short paragraphs. The descriptions of his attempts at recreations are worth the (discount) price of admission.
A (Brief) History of Vice is a short look at the history of many vices. Each chapter focuses on a specific "vice", which may be as broad as the practice of prostitution or as specific as the much-rumored salamander brandy of Slovenia. Each chapter describes the vice in question and looks at how it originated and how it existed in ancient societies, usually focusing on how the vice in question helped build those societies. Often this means discussing how the "vice" was incorporated into rituals, religion, the military, and other institutional building blocks of this thing we call civilization.
The best way I can think of to how A (Brief) History of Vice approaches this topic is as a "mosaic." Each of the fifteen chapters provides a very quick overview of a single vice, cramming centuries of history and practice into a few paragraphs. You get a little bit of a lot of things. This is neither a positive nor a negative, it's just the nature of the book: nearly every chapter could easily be a whole book's worth of riveting history and research. This book is a pop history survey, which is both your warning and enticement.
Despite this, A (Brief) History seems to be the result of quite a bit of research. While it lacks the traditional hallmarks of academic research, like footnotes and a list of references, Evans frequently references academic articles, scholarly studies, and personal interviews. It's not clear how much of this material is taken from prior work done for Cracked and how much is brand-new to the book, but I don't think it matters as much as the fact that he has made efforts to include that material. The interview snippets, in particular, are quite interesting. Adding to the primary material is Evans' reports of his personal attempts to recreate ancient methods of getting high. Again, some very interesting stuff.
Another one of those warning/enticement things is that, as the book states right on the cover, Robert Evans is a (now former) editor at Cracked. For those who don't know, Cracked is a humor website publishes listicles, usually focused on pop culture. The Personal Experiences section is a notable exception, in that the listicles are the result of in-depth interviews with people who've lived interesting lives, from traumatic events to unusual jobs (I like this section quite a bit.) I bring this up because this book does, in fact, read like a series of Cracked articles. It has the same casual, joke-filled tone, and each chapter is so discrete that the book might as well be a collection of lengthier-than-usual Cracked articles united by theme. Though Evans has toned down the bro-factor, which I much appreciate.
Overall this was a quick, light, but still interesting read. I learned some things I had not known before. If I have one critique, it's that I wish the conclusion had been much longer because I think what Evans had to say after his adventures was very interesting and I badly wanted to see him explore those ideas in more than a couple short paragraphs. The descriptions of his attempts at recreations are worth the (discount) price of admission.