Content area
Full Text
Binge Britain: alcohol and the national response Moira Plant and Martin Plant. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2006. 208pp. £19.95.
This book by two of our national experts on alcohol misuse provides a thoroughly good read that can be tackled cover to cover or dipped into for its wealth of data and references. It is certainly timely, as binge drinking is rarely out of the media spotlight. The authors admit at the start that 'binge' is an ambiguous and sometimes unhelpful term but one we are stuck with so we just have to get used to it - to some it conveys a behaviour, often with destructive intent, to others it means exceeding an arbitrary limit within a set time period. For most people it means simply becoming intoxicated, and it is but one mirror of the UK's increasing alcohol problem.
While shocking in respect of the facts reported, Binge Britain never goes beyond the evidence and...