Tobacco & Drink by Iain Gately

 As a fan of each of these books' namesake vices I felt compelled to check them out to perhaps learn a little more about two of the things that are probably contributing incrementally to my eventual demise. While the topics were different, the books were otherwise very similar. Author Iain Gately writes about each vice and its history with great detail and enough irreverance to avoid being too dry and uninteresting. That said, Gately does include a fair number of tangents such that each book is not entirely topical all the time. To be sure, the tangential nature of his history does provide a lot of interesting contextual information that helps to create an image of the world in which tobacco and alcohol were in such great use so every bit of information is ultimately worthwhile. Nonetheless even though one suspects that the books could have been much longer it sometimes feels as if Gately is getting a little off topic.

 As concerns content, these are very interesting books. Anyone who periodically indulges in either vice would find much interesting history either book. The texts contains a number of specific historical gems such as an explanatino as to the origin of Duke University and an elucidation concerning just how much of a failure Prohibition actually was. More generally, it was interesting to me to see how ubiquitous the usage of alcohol and tobacco was throughout much of recorded history. Functioning as a sort of constant background activity to the extent that each did I am surprised that civilization actually has progressed this far. Indeed I am surprised that people had the wherewithal to do anything at all.  I am confident that anyone who picks up these books, especially Drink, will be suprised at just how intoxicated the worlds historical players have generally been.

My only major complaint about either text is that both are overwhelmingly Anglo-centric. The bulk of the historical narrative in either book takes place between Europe and North America. Vey little is mentioned about Asia and almost nothing about South America or Africa is included. I would have less of a problem with this if Gately had addressed this fact in some way. The obvious inference is that he is sticking to his area of expertise and keeping the books to a reasonable length, but I would have appreciated some information about where to go to trace the history of drink or tobacco in other geographical areas. I also tend to think that broadening the geographical scope by forsaking some of the historical depth would have made for a quicker and equally enjoyable read.

Overall these books are very interesting and provide a wealth of often overlooked historical information and interesting side notes as Gately traces the evolution of two popular vices throughout the world his audience would be most familiar with. If you've every partaken of either, and even if you haven't, you'll have much to gain from picking up these books.