This issue’s shelf is stocked with books to fill in some historical gaps in your library. Topics are a classic cocktail, the 19th-century rectifiers’ “art”, and a chronicle of one of Kentucky’s most important bourbon-making centers.
THE OLD-FASHIONED: THE STORY OF THE WORLD’S FIRST CLASSIC COCKTAIL WITH RECIPES AND LORE
by Robert Simonson
2014, Ten Speed Press, $19
As the title suggests, the combination of whiskey, sugar, water, and bitters came to be the first iteration of what has become identified as a “cocktail.” Simonson thoroughly chronicles its history from its possible origins to the current creative variations on the basic theme. As
