I recently finished
Hideous Absinthe: A History of the Devil in a Bottle by Jad Adams, and I must say it was quite interesting.
While not going into tremendous and tedious amounts of details, Adams does a pretty good job of compiling the history of the drink, particularly in France and Britain. He also discusses the lives of some of the people in connection to absinthe (mostly artists and poets) and many of the myths surrounding the green drink. He starts with its humble beginnings, and works up to absinthe's rise and fall, and eventual resurgence. Personally I found the last chapter the most interesting, as it discussed the reasons why drinking absinthe today is not at all like drinking absinthe in the late nineteenth century. As an occasional absinthe drinker myself (I've come a long way since over drinking it my first time), I can only wonder how it truly felt to be under that kind of influence.
If anyone else has read this, what were your thoughts? Some reviews I read were a bit harsh.
