When Aldine originally published this book in 1969, the emerging multidisciplinary field of alcohol studies was dominated by biology, chemistry, physiology, and other 'hard sciences.' As such, writes Dwight Heath in his new foreword, the work challenged the prevailing wisdom in the authors’ use of historical, ethnographic, and cross-cultural data and their analysis of drinking behavior as an anthropological and sociocultural phenomenon.

From the Foreword to the Percheron Press Edition:

'[O]ne of only a few books that can truly be said to have had a major impact on our understanding of alcohol use and its outcomes.'