Books like Straight Up or on the Rocks — 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.  

Originally published with Broadway Books in 2006, it was revised and updated for publication with Penguin Random House in 2018. Curtis is a talented writer and storyteller, and I found his book fun to read. He creatively uses different rum-based cocktails to tell entertaining stories of America histories.

He addresses New England rum making, colonial taverns, the American Revolution, America’s nineteenth-century struggle with Demon Rum, American Prohibition, Ernest Hemingway, the emergence of tiki culture, temperance movements, the Spanish-American War, pirates and drunken sailors, and other popular topics. Curtis also introduces the reader to popular rum-based cocktail recipes.

Whiskeys rule, but the modern bar dare not lack a battery of bitters that extend beyond from the familiar Angostura and Peychaud’s. By the “dash,” cocktails demand bitters which, all too often, appear to be an afterthought. (Yet my New Orleans-born Sazerac cocktail would taste “off” without Peychaud’s and my favorite Old Fashioned unthinkable without two dashes of time-honored Angostura.)

Bitters inducts us into the realm of these botanical “drugs” distilled from flowers, spices, citrus peels, tree bark—all originally dispensed in apothecary shops as cures for digestive woes, stomach troubles, even gout. By the Gilded Age, bitters transited to the bar under brands sounding sketchy (e.g. Flint’s Quaker Bitters), but Bitters opens a new botanical wonderland for my armchair imagining, and for others’ venturesome do-it-yourself distillation. Key Lime Bitters, anyone?

Double duty as a bar book and memoir makes Crockett’s chronicle my must for skillfully conjuring two historical moments: the Golden Age of Cocktails (a.k.a. the Gilded Age) and the dark era of Prohibition. Anxious that memories of delectable cocktails and their recipes had been buried in the crypt of Prohibition’s thirteen years (1920-1933), journalist Crockett hastened to record and revive the drinks. His history is spot-on, and his fury at the nation’s failed “Noble Experiment” of Prohibition fuels this survivor’s fine wordsmithing.

Harry Craddock was a master behind the bar, and The Savoy Cocktail Book may be the most thorough chronicle of classic recipes from the Prohibition era. With the 18th Amendment, Americans had only two choices if they wanted a drink in a bar: go to an illegal speakeasy or head to places beyond the grip of the teetotalers. One of these spots was the American Bar in London’s Savoy Hotel, so named because it was one of the first bars where one could sip “American” cocktails. The no-nonsense layout and massive breadth of the recipes make this a must-have for both the layman and the professional. Among Harry Craddock’s words of wisdom is this nugget: “Shake the shaker as hard as you can: don’t just rock it: you are trying to wake it up, not send it to sleep!” I follow this advice with every drink I shake.

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.

Ending as I began, on the lighter side of things, I think that The Bloody Mary makes for an interesting single subject cocktail book as one can find. From its convoluted origins to its over-the-top renditions, the bloody mary is one of the very few recipes that have been consistently enjoyed from the Prohibition era throughout the 20th century and onward to today. Most proponents of the drink all claim to make the best one, so understanding the nuances of something as fun and all-encompassing as this brunch-time favorite, is bound to keep conversations going. And if nothing else, if you’re going to begin a drinker’s library, you may as well start with the one that’s the first drink of the day. 

When recommending books on drinking and drinking properly, not necessarily making drinks properly, there are few recent releases that cover this ground. Jeffrey’s fun primer on the basics of drinking, its culture, and traditions make this a great first floor requirement in the skyscraper of imbibing. I would add that this would be a perfect gift for novice enthusiasts as it will help dodge plenty of missteps for sure.

Handbook for Hosts is a throwback to a golden era, when dinner parties were an artform. This book covers the whole gamut: everything from canape suggestions, food recipes, cocktail recipes, how to stock your home bar, party games, conversation tips, the dos and don’t of hosting, and even 365 excuses for a party! This is the kind of book they don’t make anymore, but you wish they would. It’s entertaining, insightful, and beautifully formatted. Read this book and you’ll be a dinner party Jedi in no time.

William T. Boothby’s bartending guide was published 29 years after the first cocktail recipe book written in 1862 by American barman/impresario Jerry Thomas. In my opinion, Cocktail Boothby’s offers a more mature vision of cocktail culture in the 19th and early 20th century’s Golden Age, serving as a boozy time machine back to the era when many classic cocktails – the Manhattan, the Martini, the Mint Julep, to name a few – were born. Along with a thorough compendium of recipes, the book includes Boothby’s “Valuable Suggestions” to bartenders (“Do not serve a frosted glass to a gentleman who wears a mustache”) and his “Ten Commandments” of bartending, as well as a selection of old advertisements and various handwritten recipes. The author’s celebration of, as he calls it, “the art of mixology”, never fails to delight me.