I’ll give it to you straight up, I love this book. Specifically, I love that it treats the cocktail as a Big Idea™. And more than that, a big American idea. You see, one of the things I didn’t realize until studying cocktails, well, more studiously was that, as a general rule, the rest of the world doesn’t quite get the big deal about, or the spirit behind, cocktails (there are many notable exceptions to this, of course). William Grimes captures that phenomena, and explains it, brilliantly in this book. For example, from the prologue:

“For most of the world, America is the great entertainment factory…In the Declaration of Independence they [the colonists] enshrined, along with life and liberty, the inalienable right to pursue happiness. But happiness is hard. Happiness takes work. Even worse, happiness is a long shot. So, America settled for fun, perfected it, and sold it to an eager world…the seductive sound of ice chattering in a cocktail shaker – this is a tangible, consumable expression of the lofty principles in the Declaration of Independence, the free culture of a free people.”

Wow! And the whole damned thing is written at that same level of quality, and that’s after my shoddy editing job. Seriously, this is the thinking man’s introduction to the influential and indelible mark cocktails have left on the American psyche and the world at-large. The first chapter deals, naturally, with the Martini, and where contention exists about a drink’s origins Grimes does a good job of presenting the most likely of the origin tales and then unassumingly states his case for his preference.  The book moves from the Martini into discussing colonial and pioneer drinking habits and on through the ‘golden age’, prohibition, and to the modern American cocktail revival. All of this with a sharply written, well-lettered, and entertaining tone. In discussing vodka and its pervasive (and to many detrimental) encroachment on American drinking habits, Grimes develops vodka as an allegory for the Cold War struggle:

“For just as the United States was preparing for an apocalyptic struggle against the Soviet Union…the American way of drink was slowly succumbing to Russian influence. Its most cherished cocktails were being infiltrated-and falling, one by one, like so many dominos-by vodka”

Just brilliant, and best of all, true. William Grimes is listed on the cover as a restaurant critic for the New York Times and he’s written a book of the sort I wish I were capable of one day writing. So, my hats off and thanks to him, and thanks to Paul Clarke for introducing the book to me through his interview at Salon.com. My only detraction from the book is its lack of bartending or history of bartending essentials and techniques; but, it’s not that kind of book (though it does contain a very good set of well-grounded recipes). For the best book of that sort, taking a bartending perspective towards the history and techniques of quality cocktail mixing, The Joy of Mixology is still my go-to tome. But for a pure, informed, and thoroughly insightful book on the impact the cocktail has had on American society and the world, it doesn’t get much better than this. Buy it here, or somewhere else, please. You can get it for a song and will be glad you did.

Straight Up or On The Rocks Rating: