A Brief History of Vice: How Bad Behavior Built Civilization(2016)

Robert Evans

From an editor at the popular humor site Cracked.com and one of the writers of the bestselling You Might Be a Zombie and The De-Textbook, a rollicking look at vice throughout history, complete with instructions for re-creating debauchery at home.

Part history lesson, part how-to guide, A Brief History of Vice includes interviews with experts and original experimentation to bring readers a history of some of humanity's most prominent vices, along with explanations for how each of them helped humans rise to the top of the food chain. Evans connects the dots between coffee and its Islamic origins, the drug ephedra and Mormons, music and Stonehenge, and much more. Chapters also include step-by-step guides for re-creating prehistoric debauchery in your modern life based on Evans's firsthand fieldwork. Readers won't just learn about the beer that destroyed South America's first empire; they'll learn how to make it.