Raw and Cooked, History of the Drinker

A "History of Drinking in France," from its Gallic origins to our days. Drinking, alone or in a group, according to customs and codes, is also a social act, deeply rooted in our history. In this book paying tribute to the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss and spanning two thousand years of French history, the reader is taken from cabarets to cafes, from homes to the streets, from one social class and profession to another (winemaker, distiller, farmer, alcohol industrialist, worker, bourgeois, doctor). Is France a nation of alcoholics? If the term primarily means "having a relationship with alcohol," the pathology only comes from excess. But the water drinker also deserves attention, given its complexity: one can consume water out of necessity, taste, despair, or as a militant act against alcohol. Furthermore, alcohol drinkers alternate between wine, organic wine, cider, beer, aperitif, digestif, depending on the possibilities of the moment. Thus, we will see the emergence of the "Gallic drinker," the "medieval drinker," the "modern drinker," up to the contemporary "new look drinker." In a lively style, Didier Nourrisson tells us the unprecedented social and cultural history of our country through beverages. Author of a thesis on alcoholism and anti-alcoholism in France during the Third Republic, Didier Nourrisson, a former student of the ENS and a lecturer at the Claude-Bernard Lyon-1 University, is also the author of: The 19th Century Drinker, The Coca-Cola Saga, Cigarette: The Story of a Seductress, The School Confronting Alcohol (1870-1970), with Jacqueline Freyssinet-Dominjon.