The Martini: An Illustrated History of an American Classic

Rating:
Summary: WELL DONE!
Review: A delightful coffee table book, with great pictures and heady writing, about the history of the martini in American culture. Thankfully, it pretty much disavows, by giving it scant mention, the campy, faddist and superficial appropriation of Martini Culture by the Lounge Movement -- or whatever else you'd like to call it. (What I'm talking is that annoying phenomenon, prevalent during the nineties, but still with us, of yuppies and Gen-Xers listening to the likes of Tony Bennett and Sinatra, with a thick prophylactic of postmodern irony, while drinking blue martinis).

Or, as Barnaby Conrad sez in his book (himself the son of a well-known San Francisco restaurateur) : "The Martini's resurgence is more than just marketing expertise aimed at a generation of yuppies weary of wine or cocaine. It represents a return to style and tradition."

And, if you like this one, be sure to check out Conrad's book on the "green fairy." Also, for a more in-depth sociological treatment of the martini, check out Lowell Edmunds' THE SILVER BULLET.

Rating:
Summary: With a Twist
Review: A delightful coffee table book, with great pictures and heady writing, about the history of the martini in American culture. Thankfully, it pretty much disavows, by giving it scant mention, the campy, faddist and superficial appropriation of Martini Culture by the Lounge Movement -- or whatever else you'd like to call it. (What I'm talking is that annoying phenomenon, prevalent during the nineties, but still with us, of yuppies and Gen-Xers listening to the likes of Tony Bennett and Sinatra, with a thick prophylactic of postmodern irony, while drinking blue martinis).

Or, as Barnaby Conrad sez in his book (himself the son of a well-known San Francisco restaurateur) : "The Martini's resurgence is more than just marketing expertise aimed at a generation of yuppies weary of wine or cocaine. It represents a return to style and tradition."

And, if you like this one, be sure to check out Conrad's book on the "green fairy." Also, for a more in-depth sociological treatment of the martini, check out Lowell Edmunds' THE SILVER BULLET.

Rating:
Summary: Breezy, well-written look at a cultural phenomenon
Review: Now HERE is a hip coffee-table book. It's true that it isn't as colorful (or fundamentally healthy in subject) as Drew Kampion's "Stoked: A History of Surf Culture" (ISBN 1575440628). Nor as vividly gothic as David King's "The Commissar Vanishes," containing photographs re-touched during the Stalin regime so that unpersons might become unremembered, while the old women with the thick glasses and awkward sheaves of the forbidden-book registry (updated monthly) made the rounds of the bookshops and libraries to preen the inventory (ISBN 0805052941). Nor again is it as deeply, internationally hip as Conrad's earlier "Absinthe: History in a Bottle" (1988, reprinted 1997, ISBN 0811816508). As a European-émigré acquaintance recalled, for example: "It was 1950, we had just been married, we were driving through this little town in Switzerland. It was a Sunday after church, and the place seemed deserted. But there was a large inn, where we stopped. Most of the town was there, having a glass of wine. There was also a little private room, and the local leaders were there, the mayor, the bishop, the chief of police, and the innkeeper, who had come out to see who we were. While the rest of the people were having a glass of wine, they were off to themselves, having an absinthe, a little furtively. All perfectly illegal, and totally charming. I made a witty remark about this, a little off-color. The bishop laughed heartily, and they welcomed us in and gave us each an absinthe and toasted our marriage." (See also my separate recommendation posted for the Conrad "Absinthe.")

These are all interesting coffee-table books, and they all deal with some kind of history. But none of the others starts with lines like "I must get out of these wet clothes and into a dry Martini." Conrad's Martini book is the most US-pop-culture-hip of this bunch. It is light-hearted and loaded with trivia, from old magazine advertisements to collectible cocktail shakers to an unforgettable movie photo on page 53 of Joan Crawford in high-contrast black-and-white, Martini in one hand, cigarette in the other. It is an instructive history as well as a very funny narrative.

By the late 1970s the Martini was dying out, as Conrad mentions; it was unhip, old-fashioned. By 1990 (Conrad doesn't mention but I do) a character in Eric Kraft's contemporary novel "Reservations Recommended" (ISBN 0517572338) was so out-of-it that he "ordered a martini without irony." You wouldn't have guessed it by the late 1990s when a suburban Crate-and-Barrel store was selling seemingly little else but Martini glasses and 1930s-reproduction cocktail shakers, and the Libbey Glass website offered numerous Martini models including with Z-stems. The Martini did not stay unhip for long.

Rating:
Summary: Breezy, well-written look at a cultural phenomenon
Review: Now HERE is a hip coffee-table book. It's true that it isn't as colorful (or fundamentally healthy in subject) as Drew Kampion's "Stoked: A History of Surf Culture" (ISBN 1575440628). Nor as vividly gothic as David King's "The Commissar Vanishes," containing photographs re-touched during the Stalin regime so that unpersons might become unremembered, while the old women with the thick glasses and awkward sheaves of the forbidden-book registry (updated monthly) made the rounds of the bookshops and libraries to preen the inventory (ISBN 0805052941). Nor again is it as deeply, internationally hip as Conrad's earlier "Absinthe: History in a Bottle" (1988, reprinted 1997, ISBN 0811816508). As a European-émigré acquaintance recalled, for example: "It was 1950, we had just been married, we were driving through this little town in Switzerland. It was a Sunday after church, and the place seemed deserted. But there was a large inn, where we stopped. Most of the town was there, having a glass of wine. There was also a little private room, and the local leaders were there, the mayor, the bishop, the chief of police, and the innkeeper, who had come out to see who we were. While the rest of the people were having a glass of wine, they were off to themselves, having an absinthe, a little furtively. All perfectly illegal, and totally charming. I made a witty remark about this, a little off-color. The bishop laughed heartily, and they welcomed us in and gave us each an absinthe and toasted our marriage." (See also my separate recommendation posted for the Conrad "Absinthe.")

These are all interesting coffee-table books, and they all deal with some kind of history. But none of the others starts with lines like "I must get out of these wet clothes and into a dry Martini." Conrad's Martini book is the most US-pop-culture-hip of this bunch. It is light-hearted and loaded with trivia, from old magazine advertisements to collectible cocktail shakers to an unforgettable movie photo on page 53 of Joan Crawford in high-contrast black-and-white, Martini in one hand, cigarette in the other. It is an instructive history as well as a very funny narrative.

By the late 1970s the Martini was dying out, as Conrad mentions; it was unhip, old-fashioned. By 1990 (Conrad doesn't mention but I do) a character in Eric Kraft's contemporary novel "Reservations Recommended" (ISBN 0517572338) was so out-of-it that he "ordered a martini without irony." You wouldn't have guessed it by the late 1990s when a suburban Crate-and-Barrel store was selling seemingly little else but Martini glasses and 1930s-reproduction cocktail shakers, and the Libbey Glass website offered numerous Martini models including with Z-stems. The Martini did not stay unhip for long.

Rating:
Summary: The quintissential American cocktail, in all it's glory.
Review: This beautiful "coffee table" style book is dedicated to that most beautiful and perfect of cocktails, the inestimable martini.

Conrad's informative text, colorful anecdotes, and lavish illustrations make this book a wonderful addition to the great miracle it celebrates.

Mix yourself a martini, (two olives, shaken -- not stirred) relax in an easy chair, and enjoy this book!

Rating:
Summary: WELL DONE!
Review: This book is great--it has history, humor, and lots of glamorous pictures, and manages to keep the cheese factor very low. A great gift for the drinkers in your life!