Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto [Hardcover]

Seeing only one negative review, I felt it necessary to point out that this book was written in 1948, and should not be taken so seriously. take it for what it is, a classic book on cocktails from a Mark Twain Scholar who has his opinons on how drinks should be made and enjoyed. Enjoy the book and think of the days of black and white TV shows about the nuclear family when dad came home and mom mixed him a perfect Martini. This is history.

Shaking your head over "martinis" which are mere sugary cocktails in martini glasses? Or worse yet, *gasping* in horror over belly shots? Looking forward to that first civilized sip of whiskey as you put a harried work day to an end? I highly recommend the intoxicating writing of Bernard Devoto's "The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto." Originally published in 1948, this slim volume, now in reprint (with an excellent forward by Daniel Handler), is an absolute delight.

A Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner, Mark Twain expert, writer for many years for Harper's Magazine, and a curmudgeon to the core, Devoto has crafted an elegant paean to "the violet hour," "an hour of diminishing, of slowing down, of quieting" to sip a gin martini - one of only two cocktails he countenances (the other a slug of whiskey.) Discussing his favorites, Devoto is truly rhapsodic - "art's sunburst of imagined delight becoming real" - and offers suggestions for the place ("a martini is a city dweller, a metropolitan") as well as what to hum as one mixes the first batch ("neither barbershop nor jazz, between the choir and the glee club.")

Equally quotable is his skewering of his dislikes: "Nothing can be done with people who put olives in martinis, presumably because in some desolate childhood hour someone refused them a pickle;" "Hot drinks are for people who have had skiing accidents, though it is an open question whether anyone who skis is worth giving liquor to or his life worth saving;" or on the topic of Daiquiris -"Mainly it is drunk as all sweet liquors are, in a regressive fantasy, a sad hope of regaining childhood's joy at the soda fountain."

Some question the extent to which this is satire. Bernard Devoto's wife, Avis, was a good friend of Julia Child. I am in the midst of reading the women's correspondence in "As Always, Julia," Joan Reardon, editor. Upon first meeting, Julia won Bernard's admiration after drinking down two or three of his martinis without turning a hair. On the other hand, Avis notes that Bernard is quite the oenophile, being very good at the parlor game of identifying the vineyard and the year. I believe The Hour was written in good fun. You'll have as much fun or more when you read it.

To those of us who enjoy a retro cocktail and the finest hour of the day; this work should be on your shelf.
As bracing as a bourbon straight up with a tall glass of ice water on the side after a long day, this is a most enjoyable read.