The Spirit World

In the minds of many — even (or perhaps especially) people who do not regularly imbibe — the Martini holds a special place. It seems to serve as the pole star of the cocktail firmament. As the iconic cocktail, it has been discussed and depicted more than any other: in film, in New Yorker cartoons, in bent neon, and, of course, in books.

A search for “martini” in the “Cooking, Food & Wine” category at Amazon.com will, as of today, generate 1,485 hits, with many dozens of them being prefectly relevant: books specifically about the Martini. Naturally, when you have dozens of any one thing, some will be better than others. Some of these books are cursory and shallow, and simply recycle material that’s easily found in the others. Some are glossily attractive, but lack substance: you’d pick them up and flip through them if they were lying on the coffee table in front of you, but you wouldn’t feel compelled to refer back to them. When you’re browsing at the B&M bookstore, it’s relatively easily to identify these, but it can be a bit harder to winnow the wheat from the chaff online.

As such, I thought it might be helpful to highlight three Martini books that definitely make the cut, three books that I find myself repeatedly reading and referring too…

Shaken Not Stirred: A Celebration of the Martini, by Anistatia R. Miller and Jared M. Brown (HarperCollins, 1997), is informative, fun to read, and moderately priced. This relatively slender volume packs in an impressive amount of history, lore, and mixological discussion, and — in the sidebars — a treasure trove of line art, cartoons, and recipes. The book also contains the most informed and open-minded discussion I have found of what, precisely, a Martini is. My one quibble with the book is its title. There is absolutely nothing wrong with stirring a Martini. In fact, the consensus among informed bartenders is that clear cocktails such as the Martini should be stirred, rather than shaken. Miller and Brown seem to have chosen the title for its Bond-esque cachet, though, rather than mixological ideology, since many of the Martini recipes included in the book specify that the drink should be stirred. That being said, if I had to recommend one book to someone interested in learning more about the drink, this would be it.

Lowell Edmunds is a Classics professor at Rutgers, and in Martini, Straight Up: The Classic American Cocktail (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), he brings the rigor and thoroughness of a true scholar to the study of the Martini’s place in American culture. Edmunds uses a combination of historical and deconstructionist techniques to minutely parse what we have said about the Martini and, in turn, what it has said about us. This book is not an easy read, but it amply rewards by enlarging our undestanding not only of the Martini, but also of the nature and value of informed and disciplined cultural criticism.

The Martini: An Illustrated History of an American Classic, by Barnaby Conrad III (Chronicle Books, 1995), is a well written and handsomely produced book. In the main, its organization is historical, tracing the drink from its “Dubious Origins” to its “Great Revival”. Throughout, the text is interlaced with excellent art: film stills, oil on canvas paintings, photographs, line art, and cartoons. The book closes with a chapter on “Mixing the Perfect Martini” and two appendices outlining the history of gin and vermouth. After reading this book, one has a much better sense of precisely why and how the Martini achieved its iconic status.

As I said at the outset, though, there are dozens of books on the Martini, and I haven’t had a chance to peruse them all. And, of course, there are quite a few long-out-of-print books that could teach Martini aficianados a great deal. If you know of any gems, please share your thoughts with the rest of The Spirit World community. Like, in a comment!