Alcoholica esoterica : a collection of useful and useless information as it relates to the history and consumption of all manner of booze /

Lendler (An Undone Fairy Tale) has distilled his favorite facts about alcoholic libations into a breezy and entertaining book that covers the basic alcoholic groups as well as assorted historical drinking events and personages. Liberally salted with pertinent quotations, it offers fascinating details about everything from the art of toasting to the origins of different kinds of cocktails. As Lendler himself is the first to admit, however, he is in no way a "professional" historian, and this shows in the lack of a bibliography and an index, which diminishes the book's usefulness as a reference source. Ben Schott's Schott's Food and Drink Miscellany, which doesn't delve into alcoholic beverages in quite as much depth as Lendler's book but also covers food, might be a better choice for reference collections. Recommended for medium to large public libraries as an amusing selection for circulating collections.-John Charles, Scottsdale P.L., AZ (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A ridiculously entertaining collection of alcohol-related facts and tidbits, gathered together and chuckled over by Ian Lendler. In this wry book of alcoholic anecdotes, Lendler covers significant ground in the Land of Booze. One moment he tenders a neat little bar trick--drop a raisin in a glass of champagne and it will circulate in perpetual motion from the bottom of the glass to the top and back again--then delivers, still in a jazzy tone, a compact history of fortified wines. There are vest-pocket profiles of giants he would carve on Mount Lushmore--W.C. Fields, Humphrey Bogart, Dean Martin, Dorothy Parker, Winston Churchill--and scads of useless information to while away happy hour: how many berries, herbs, roots and flowers are required for making vermouth; the origin of the word "binge"; why Oktoberfest is called Oktoberfest even though it's celebrated in September; and some profoundly disturbing hangover-cure hokum, such as ground swallow's beaks in myrrh (ancient Assyria) and rubbing half a lemon in the pit of your drinking arm (Puerto Rico). Raise a glass to Lendler, then grab the nearest person you can find and reel off a few tidbits from this collection of gloriously mirthful arcana. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.