Wall Street Journal: a thoughtful and spirited defense of intoxication
“You might suspect that Mr. Slingerland, an expert in Chinese philosophy with eclectic academic interests, is seeing his subject through beer goggles. But his approach is stone-cold sober, “defending the power of Dionysus . . . in a way that bows to Apollo,” as he puts it.”
Julian Baggini, “‘Drunk’ Review: Two Cheers for Happy Hour,” Wall Street Journal, May 20, 2021.
Discover Magazine: illuminating and Intoxicating
“Within the first few lines, Drunk will have you snorting beer out of your nose”
“More pages to turn,” Discover June 2021
Library Journal: An illuminating yet conversational study
“Slingerland’s informal, conversational style weaves modern scientific studies with ancient mythology.”
Meyer, Jeffrey, Review of Drunk, Library Journal (starred review).
Booklist: Jarring and Entertaining
“Slingerland, though, has no truck with drunky cuteness. He’s a scholar, with solid academic credentials and a professorial display of charts and statistics, which readers can comfortably skip but that do provide scientific and historical justification for a wealth of jarring and entertaining statements: “We wouldn’t have civilization as we know it without intoxication in some form.” That the form was alcoholic largely accounts for the agrarian expansion that created the modern world: got to have something to ferment. Chunks of the study sing the benevolence and importance of the sauce in business, religion, friendship, the arts, and romance”
Don Crinklaw, “Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization,” Booklist, May 1, 2021
Reader’s Digest: Creating Space for Spontaneity
“Learn how to stop overscheduling your life, embrace surprise and have some fun.”
Rumack, Leah. “How Little Acts of Spontaneity Can Make Your Day,” Reader’s Digest Canada, April 29, 2021.
LSE announces large DRH Grant
“This is a true humanities-science collaboration. The tool is a useful resource for humanities scholars - a qualitative and quantitative database of history. But for social scientists, it’s now one of (if not the) largest quantitative databases of history.”
London School of Economics press release, “The Database of Religious History receives grant from John Templeton Foundation”
Kirkus: A spirited look at drinking
“A professor of Asian studies at the University of British Columbia, Slingerland draws on archaeology, anthropology, history, neuroscience, psychopharmacology, social psychology, literature, poetry, and genetics to argue...for the social, cultural, and psychological benefits of getting drunk.”
“A hyperbolic but entertaining defense of intoxication via alcohol,” Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2021.
The University of British Columbia: DRH Awarded Largest Humanities Grant
“UBC’s Database of Religious History (DRH) project has received the largest grant to date for a single research project in the humanities at UBC—$4.8 million from the John Templeton Foundation.
Led by Dr. Edward Slingerland and Dr. M. Willis Monroe, the project aims to democratize knowledge about religious history, enabling scholars of religion from around the world to share their expertise with a global audience by contributing to the free, searchable database. Each contribution in turn makes the database more useful—and reliable—for everyone.”
“Database of Religious History awarded largest grant for a UBC humanities research project,” The University of British Columbia, April 13, 2021.
The Other Press: Achieving our goals
“There’s something to be said about making a plan and ironing out all the steps along the way, but it’s not always the ideal approach to getting things done. You see, when you try to organize every aspect of your life, you’ll find yourself overworked and disappointed when things inevitably don’t play out the way you anticipated, or rather, planned.
In his book, Trying Not To Try, Edward Slingerland talks about how “we too often devote ourselves to pushing harder or moving faster in areas of our life where effort and striving are, in fact, profoundly counterproductive.” If we gave in a little bit to the idea of spontaneity or flow we’d find ourselves achieving our goals much easier.”
Morgan Hannah, “Trying Not to Try,” The Other Press, March 16, 2021.
Publishers Weekly: Witty and Well-Informed
“Slingerland contends that the benefits of intoxication, including boosted creativity, stress relief, and enhanced cooperation, were key to the rise of the ‘first large-scale societies’…. A witty and well-informed narrator, Slingerland ranges across a wide range of academic fields to make his case. Readers will toast this praiseworthy study.”
“Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization,” Publishers Weekly, February 11, 2021