Part travelogue, part instruction manual, part bar philosophy, part discursive history, Mondo Cocktail: A Shaken and Stirred Historyfits into a larger genre than your average bartending book. It is a whimsical examination of the drinks that have captured our imagination and have symbolically identified certain areas and people all over the world. Mondo Cocktailgives a careful anatomy of 12 classic cocktails and their origins, and teaches the reader far more than the proper method of making these concoctions. The book gives the reader all the requisite knowledge they will need for opening cocktail party conversation about the history of libation and its cultural importance, not to mention fun and entertaining trivia such as where and how Ernest Hemingway drank his Daiquiri; Abraham Lincoln's sordid part as a bourbon distiller; Kentucky and the Mint Julep; the Cuba Libre; the birth of the FDA as a precursor to Prohibition; the only recipe Jackie Kennedy pinned up in the White House kitchen; the world's first cocktail; the world's most expensive cocktail, and much more! Beautifully packaged in a small hardcover edition and illustrated throughout, this is the perfect gift for the drinks connoisseur in your life.