Imbibe!

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 well-researched volume explores the history of cocktails in the U.S. through the godfather of bartenders everywhere, Jerry Thomas. 

Since Thomas was the first to systematically record the drinks of his age, publishing his first bartender’s guide in 1862, his writings serve as important historic sources from anyone interested in mixology.  

Bartender guides tend to be terse and practical, reducing storied and noble creations to a few efficient lines of text.  Wondrich engagingly discusses the history and merits of more than one hundred cocktails, all of which illuminate the times and places in which they were created and drank. 

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The sun was shining on the cocktail world the day that David Wondrich — a former English professor with a PhD in comparative literature — decided to step away from his existing vocation and turn his attention on drinks. He’s been hugely influential in the rise of the modern cocktail scene and is considered the foremost authority on the history of mixed drinks, shedding light on the origins of well-known, as well as esoteric libations. Imbibe is a fascinating read. Wondrich’s writing style is extremely engaging, you’ll fly through the book and still be left wanting more.

For cocktail lovers who want to know the stories behind their drinks, this is the book to have. Imbibe! is deeply researched, elegantly written, and delves into such historically murky territory as the origin of the word “cocktail” itself. Wondrich also provides compelling evidence for an accurate accounting of the first Manhattan cocktail and no, it had nothing to do with Winston Churchill’s mother, Jenny Jerome. Historic, long-forgotten ingredients are described, as well as the contemporary ones. Uses for each in early and current cocktails are laid out with scores of recipes. The contributions of legendary bartender Jerry Thomas (1830-1885)… show more.

IMBIBE! earns its all-caps title and exclamation point because it is the undisputed “bible” of cocktail books. As a longtime historical researcher, I marveled at Wondrich’s deep dive into the backstory of innumerable drinks, bars, and bartenders, together with their histories, eccentricities, and achievements. Along the way, I found Wondrich to be a master librarian of the bar books compiled and published from the late 1700s colonial days to recent times. IMBIBE! includes author-tested recipes, situates the drinks in their historical moments, and profiles marquee mixologists, especially the Founding Father of cocktail culture, “Professor” Jerry Thomas (b.1830), whose How to… show more.