Books like Esquires Handbook for Hosts — picked by fans

Without a doubt, David Wondrich is the preeminent cocktail historian of our time. If that doesn’t sound like a real thing…well, just start reading his work.

No one else has his mastery of our drinking history or a gift for communicating all its twists and turns. Every book he’s written is a great read, but this book is the best jumping-off point, following the story of mid-19th-century bartender Jerry Thomas with colorful tales and excellent recipes.  

This no-frills cocktail handbook has been hailed the “Most-read cocktail expert around” for a good reason.

Regan engagingly romanticizes cocktail and drinking culture. He details the history of specific cocktails, includes theories of how certain drinks came about and adds quotes about drinking from notable figures.

He makes you want to try drinks you have yet to try. He also muses about the philosophy of being a bartender and what it takes to be a good bartender.

Although the author makes it a humorous and fun read, the book is much more. It is a thoughtfully laid-out handbook for creating classic cocktails. Of course, one can search for a recipe by cocktail name.

But the book includes a great glossary, and charts by the family of cocktail, making it easy to be like; it’s been a long day, and we have some leftover rye and lemons in the fridge. What… show more.

Most reference books aren’t also entertaining reads. But this book manages to be both.

Written in 1948, it’s an in-depth guide to the taxonomy of classic cocktails–helping you distinguish your Sours from your Daisies–but written with a sense of humor and levity that other books lack. For a look into mid-century American cocktail culture, one of the cocktail world’s true golden ages, this is as good as it gets. 

Who doesn’t love a wooden book? Seriously, its cover is made of wood, and it’s bound together with cut leather. The internal pages have the tea-stained look of an old pirate map and smell like the very old books you find in the back of a goodwill store. My copy was given to me by Dick Bradsell, inventor of some of the most enduring modern classics such as the Bramble and Espresso Martini. It’s a true gem, not just for the wonderful recipes but for the illustrations — by far the most charming and amusing that you’ll find in any cocktail book. But if you’re getting the impression this book is all hokey-charm and no substance, you’d be very wrong. This is a tight collection of well-presented recipes, a really functional resource, as well as a fun one.

I had the distinct pleasure of visiting Tony Conigliaro’s Drink Factory laboratory in London where I found a mad scientist’s lair filled with complex, technical equipment, dry erase boards covered in formulas, and shelves of esoteric, bottled ingredients. While The Cocktail Lab finds a logical home in the era of molecular mixology, it is far more than that, showcasing its author as part chemist, part bartender, and part magician. First and foremost, the book captures what Conigliaro calls his “love affair with liquids”. The book’s cocktails – many of which I have tasted – are sensory experiences that capture not only flavors, but aromas, textures, and even memories. While modernizing many classic recipes, Conigliaro simultaneously pushes the definition of what a cocktail is and can be. For me, The Cocktail Lab celebrates the ever-evolving possibilities of liquid pleasure in the modern world and how a cocktail can be a transformative… show more.

Now that you’re in the mood for a good classic cocktail, this book will teach you how to make one.

Death & Co: Modern Classic Cocktails is the bible for the modern craft cocktail movement. Written by the creators of the legendary New York City bar Death & Co, which is on my bucket list of bars to visit, the book teaches you everything you need to know to make a good cocktail, from which flavors pair well together, when to shake and when to stir, and how to come up with your own new cocktail.

The book contains 500 recipes and gorgeous photos that will make you want to take up mixology in your spare time. 

I love the premise of this book. When someone asks us for a cocktail recipe, 90% of the time–or more–it’s because they’re making it for a party. So, an entire book of cocktails already proportioned for a crowd and tested for success when made in bulk just makes sense.

Quite a number of cocktails are actually a pain to make in advance. This book spares you the nuisance of considering those and gets right to the (sophisticated, beautifully crafted) party drinks. 

Alice Lascelle’s Ten Cocktails is not so much a recipe book as it is a musing on the ten drinks that have defined one woman’s personal journey as a drinks journalist. Part travelogue, part memoir, part historical tour, the book explores the author’s own experiences with drinks while diving into their broader social contexts.

The accounts are meaningful, engaging, and surprisingly entertaining. I particularly loved the description of her British parents’ inadequate storage of ice and the woefully poor gin and tonics they served up as a result. An all too familiar scene from my own household growing up - I now understand why I disliked this drink for so long.

Toni Tipton Martin is one of the leading authorities on the history of food and drink in the United States and on African American influence on culinary traditions in particular. Drawing from her vast private library of Black-authored cookbooks, she has penned several multi-award-winning books inspired by the collection, each of which is a must-read (and indeed partly inspired me to write my own book-about-books).

In her most recent effort, Juke Joints, Jazz Clubs, and Juice, she brings cocktail recipes from these long-forgotten books to life – including many from known and unknown female writers - and expertly weaves them with rich historical details and insightful personal stories. While many of the cocktails were familiar to me, this book really made me appreciate them on a whole new level.

From the dawn of cocktails, the opportunities for women to write bartending guides have historically been few and far between. Fortunately, this is now changing with the rise over the last few decades of female bartending talent. Authors Ivy Mix and Lynnette Marrero are up there with the best of them today.

A Quick Drink is a compendium of the recipes contributed by the all-female contestants of their global bartending competition, Speed Rack. It is both a lively read and a rare glimpse into the creative process behind the art of modern mixology.

I particularly love the way the recipes are positioned not only by the obvious category of drink but also by the time, place, ingredient, or mood that originally inspired them and consequently turned them into winners.