And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails
Author: Wayne Curtis
One spirit, Ten cocktails, and Four Centuries of American History
And a Bottle of Rum tells the raucously entertaining story of America as seen through the bottom of a drinking glass. With a chapter for each of ten cocktails—from the grog sailors drank on the high seas in the 1700s to the mojitos of modern club hoppers—Wayne Curtis reveals that the homely spirit once distilled from the industrial waste of the exploding sugar trade has managed to infiltrate every stratum of New World society.
Curtis takes us from the taverns of the American colonies, where rum delivered both a cheap wallop and cash for the Revolution, to the plundering pirate ships off the coast of Central America, to the watering holes of pre-Castro Cuba, and to the kitsch-laden tiki bars of 1950s America. Here are sugar barons and their armies conquering the Caribbean, Paul Revere stopping for a nip during his famous ride, Prohibitionists marching against “demon rum,” Hemingway fattening his liver with Havana daiquiris, and today’s bartenders reviving old favorites like Planter’s Punch. In an age of microbrewed beer and single-malt whiskeys, rum—once the swill of the common man—has found its way into the tasting rooms of the most discriminating drinkers.
Awash with local color and wry humor, And a Bottle of Rum is an affectionate toast to this most American of liquors, a chameleon spirit that has been constantly reinvented over the centuries by tavern keepers, bootleggers, lounge lizards, and marketing gurus. Complete with cocktail recipes for would-be epicurean time-travelers, this is history at its most intoxicating.
The Washington Post - Jonathan Yardley
Wayne Curtis has tried in this book "to run to ground the story of America" by telling the histories of 10 drinks in which the chief ingredient is rum. The idea is not quite as far-fetched as it sounds, though at times Curtis strains pretty hard to make a point. Still, his argument is original and interesting. The history of rum, he says, is "the great American story: the ne'er-do-well who overcame the unfortunate circumstances of its birth to be accepted in the more rarified world of the gentry."
Publishers Weekly
Like a great barroom raconteur, the author of this engaging treatise regales his audience with piquant opinions, colorful trivia, lush rhetorical turns ("[t]he first taste washes over me and brings to mind the scene in Wizard of Oz in which the black-and-white world suddenly bursts into color") and an exalted, occasionally inflated, sense of liquor's place in the greater scheme of things. A travel writer and contributing editor to Preservation, Curtis follows rum's checkered 400-year career through various incarnations, from the cheap, caustic "kill-devil" that fortified 17th-century pirates (Blackbeard was said to enjoy a glass of flaming rum mixed with gunpowder) to today's mojitos, made from palatable, if bland, mass market rums. His profiles of rum-based cocktails (with an all-important appendix of recipes) serve as starting points for excursions on such topics as slavery in the West Indies, the temperance movement, Ernest Hemingway's epic daiquiri binges and the rise and fall of the tiki bar. Curtis's grander pronouncements ("Rum embodies America's laissez-faire attitude: It is whatever it wants to be") are true only in the groggiest sense, but readers who come along on this charming barhop through cultural history will toast them nonetheless. (July) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
New interesting textbook: Human Communication or Health Economics and Policy with Economic Applications
Best 50 Salsas
Author: Christie Katona
Spicy vegetable and fruit salsas are quick and easy to whip up in your own kitchen, and make wonderful accompaniments to Mexican cooking; grilled fish, poultry and meats; egg dishes; sandwiches; rice and bean dishes; and many other foods.
This book offers a marvelous assortment of recipes as well as information about common salsa ingredients (including different types of chile peppers) and ideas for serving salsa.
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