New York Times reporter Grimes's preface characterizes the cocktail as a quintessentially American invention that expresses our fluent, nontraditional, fun-centered culture, and that fits our role as the world's supplier of idle amusement and cheap thrills. His ensuing history of the cocktail is in the same spirit. Between an opening tribute to the ultimate cocktail—the martini (in which Grimes notes various affected variations on the ostentatious rejection of vermouth in the ritual of its preparation)—and a concluding observation on the current, yuppie- driven dominance of vodka (a development that has turned the cocktail into ``nothing more than a goosed-up fruit drink'' but that has also brought back the martini in a ``purer'' form), Grimes looks at American drinking habits from the Mayflower's passage on. (Typically, he cites that ship's impressive stores of beer without considering beer-drinking in historical context or distinguishing it from the imbibing of hard liquor.) Along the way, the author entertains with a parade of passing potables from the hot-rum juleps with which early Americans began their days to such ephemeral inventions as the Timber Doodle that Charles Dickens encountered on his 1840 US tour, the Blue Blazer that mixers actually set on fire and fanned into spectacular flames, and the silly Slippery Nipple that marked that Cocktail Age's decline. Grimes sings the praises of the elegant 19th-century saloon and its professional bartenders, and he mourns the degeneration of the art wrought by Prohibition, the Depression, WW II, and postwar commercial developments that led to liquor companies, not local bartenders, inventing new mixed drinks. Unlike last year's entertaining and scholarly analysis from German historian Wolfgang Schivelbusch (Tastes of Paradise), 1992, this is a facile, frothy mix that goes down smoothly and proves diverting enough. (Twenty line drawings.)
Pub Date: April 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-671-76724-0
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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