Lucas Blogs About A Brief History of Vice

Drunken monkeys? Tell me more.

So, what's this book's deal?

Well, do you remember Robert Evans from cracked.com?

He's the guy who did stuff like go into active war zones to talk to people about their experiences?

Yes, yes he did. He's not with Cracked anymore, but when he was he wrote a book called A Brief History of Vice: How Bad Behavior Built Civilization.

How would you describe the genre?

Oh, um, I guess this is loosely, a popular science book, although it does also have a lot of stuff about history and sociology, so maybe it's more of a hodgepodge. It's maybe more of a collection of essays exploring various things that are considered vices in modern society: drugs, prostitution, and being an asshole. It doesn't necessarily advocate for or against any of those things, Evans is more interested in exploring the ways in which these behaviors (and society's reaction to them) has shaped our modern world. He also includes instructions for how to replicate outdated intoxicants (with the caveat that he only explains how to recreate ones that are currently legal).

So, basically every D.A.R.E. officer's worst nightmare?

Well, given that studies of D.A.R.E.-style programs have shown that the program's effectiveness is questionable at best, they probably have more important things to worry about. Anyway, Evans is clearly writing for an adult audience, so I guess don't worry about him corrupting the young.

Okay. Given that you've described the book as "loosely" belonging to the popular science genre, I suppose that means it isn't particularly rigorous.

That would be a correct supposition. Although it is clear that Evans has put in a good deal of research and conducted interviews, there aren't any citations. The best documented parts of his research are, in fact, his own experiments, the best of which is his attempt at recreating salamander schnapps.

Excuse me?

Oh, so he heard about a region in Slovenia where the locals allegedly make salamander brandy by drowning fire salamanders in brandy. Supposedly the salamander poison would cause powerful hallucinations. However, locals mostly just told him they'd heard rumors about it being made in the next village over or a few generations ago.

So it's probably just folklore?

Probably, but he did then buy a pet salamander, milk it for its poison and mix that with schnapps. See the venom is a paralytic so it mostly just took his legs out from under him.

Were all of his experiments that ill-advised?

No, but several were. Though the safest (and definitely most legal) was the one where he took a marching band to a replica of stone henge to see if the acoustic properties could actually induce a trance state.

Could they?

Kinda. But I think we're getting sidetracked by individual trivia items instead of addressing the book's central thesis.

That "Bad Behavior Built Civilization?"

Yeah.

Well, how strong is his case?

About as strong as any thesis that anyone one thing "built civilization." If anything, it seems more likely that his real goal was to get readers to keep an open mind about things that are currently stigmatized (like sex work and drug use) because the standards of acceptable behavior are always shifting. That said, I didn't go in expecting anything world-changing. I mostly went in expecting to read fun anecdotes about ill-advised attempts to recreate ancient intoxicants and fun trivia about things like drunken monkeys, medieval coffee bans, and, of course, drinking salamander venom. Evans is a good writer, even when he isn't trying to be funny (which he usually suceeds at, btw). Each chapter succinctly covers the topic at hand, with a few jokes sprinkled in between historical data and insights from interview subjects.

Is it one those books you can just skip around in?

Yeah, although Evans does refer back to previous chapters, if you just want to know about a specific topic you can just skip there and read about it. That about covers it really. It's a fun little book and it's a nice quick read.

A Brief History of Vice: How Bad Behavior Built Civilization by Robert Evans, Plume Books trade paperback edition, 2016, 259 pages, pairs well with whatever you want really, I'm not gonna judge you for your vices

Links:

If you just want to know about salamander schnapps, he also wrote about it on Cracked.

I haven't listened to it, but apparently these days Robert Evans hosts a podcast called Behind the Bastards.