From the Alamagoozlum to the Zombie 100 Rediscovered Recipes and the Stories Behind Them

This is a must read for any aspiring bartender or mixologist... It is a good grasp on "where things came from", why they are called what they are called, and the love for BITTERS! it aint classic if it aint gotta bitters! haha no but this is a great read if you can't get your hands on the Savoy Cocktail book and there's a ton of information including Procedures for each drink and WHERE to purchase every product he talks about.

This is an absolutely joyous ride through the history of cocktails. Great recipes from waaaay back when and vivid storytelling and anecdotes throughout. Beautiful pictures and a perfect resource guide in the back. Highly Recommended for anyone wanting to pursue a thorough education in cocktail creation and consumption or just wanting to brush up and rekindle memories of long forgotten jewels.

Bringing the recipes, the stories behind them and what tips are available for their making, Ted Haigh's passion for these lost cocktails is well noticed throughout the book. The drinks are very old and very forgotten, giving a perspective of balance, ingredients and history that is very hard to come by elsewhere and obviously had seen a lot of effort in the making.
I'll admit to enjoying several drinks from this book, but it is rare to find guests knowing them - or easily appreciating them, but to a discerning or interested guest - choosing a drink from this book is a very unique experience.

This is a great book for the nostalgic mixologist. Not only are the recipes fun to create, the history makes for a great discussion. It's been fun creating syrups and tonics from scratch and sourcing several of the vintage ingredients. Very well structured.

A fantastic book.I have dozens of cocktail books at home and when i found the first version of this book,it instantly became one of my favourites.
This new revised edition is even better.More recipes.More photos.More information.The recipes are now listed alphabetically and with the spiral binder it's so easy to lay down and follow when mixing drinks.
No-one interested in cocktails and the history behind them should be without this book in their collection.Brilliant.

Intentionally placed color pictures of cocktails & vintage ads captivate the reader. The design of this book is well thought out and the history is fascinating.The recipes are easy to read & follow. It blew my expectations away.

"Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails" is a cocktail recipe book, but--as far as recipe books go--is quite readable and is both easy to digest in part or to read cover-to-cover, depending on your mood. Ted Haigh provides detailed (and interesting) back stories on most of the drinks featured in the book, as well as sidebar sections on many of the lesser-known spirits that the recipes call for. In addition to the main parts of the book, Haigh includes an introduction that covers the resurgence of classic cocktails, a glossary, a bibliography, and a resource guide to help you find many of the rarer ingredients he mentions throughout the text. Haigh clearly put a lot of thought and effort into compiling such a comprehensive guide, and it shows: The book is nicely put together and is wonderfully cohesive, with many of the recipes including references to other, similar or related recipes that can be found elsewhere within the book.

I do have a few complaints about the book: First of all, it's spiral-bound, which makes it nice as a recipe book and not so nice as something to sit down and read through. Second, the recipes are often not updated to modern tastes and are geared towards the sweet palates of those who originally created the drinks. For example, try the first cocktail listed, the Almagoozlum, which is virtually undrinkable given its syrupy combination of 1.5 ounces of both Chartreuse and simple syrup, with no citrus to balance. Make sure to carefully review the recipes before pouring and shaking, in order to avoid pouring expensive ingredients down the drain. Finally, the resources section at the end of the book, while a great addition, generally favors a few extremely overpriced Internet retailers. Google around and you'll easily find better options.

All in all, despite these few issues, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about the hows, whys, and whens of classic cocktails. I suspect that many of these recipes were forgotten for a good reason (certainly the Almagoozlum!), but just as many deserve to be revisited so that they can once again grace drinkers' glasses. And even if you find the recipes to be entirely without merit, the background stories will still make this book a worthwhile purchase.

this book is awesome!! I bought it for my husband for Christmas. The condition was as described and now I get to buy all sorts of new kinds of liquor to make these drinks. The notes of history are great too!!

This is a well presented book, but unfortunately it is poorly researched in places. Case in point, The Aviation cocktail (it's in the the store preview too so you can double check this for yourself) --Haigh is taking as his primary source for a lot of his recipes Harry Craddock's book from the 1930s. Craddock got The Aviation cocktail wrong (omitted the creme de violette entirely, and because Craddock's recipe didn't attempt to replace it something sweet to balance out the lemon juice, it's obviously just a typo) yet Haigh interprets this as definitive. Building upon this confusion, Haigh, calls this cocktail with addition of creme de violette a "Blue Moon". However, if you look in Hugo Ensslin's 1917 book you see that A) The Aviation had creme de violette and B) The Blue Moon is a very distinct cocktail in it's own right and calls vermouth, orange bitters and for Creme Yvette

Is two stars too harsh for this book? Maybe, but for a book pretends to be authoritative, it perpetuates errors (like this, but there are others) that really need to die. Do you merely want a superficial impression of cocktail history?--then this book is wonderfully laid out and fun to peruse. However, if you actually care bout historic cocktails--then read this book with many grains of salt and stock up on some vintage cocktail books and read them critically.

So,

My boyfriend got this for me for Christmas last year and we have been having an in credibly fun time making cocktails out from the recipes in the book. We have found quite a few great ones (Satan's whiskers, the Mamie Taylor and Moscow mules are our favorites so far) and few that weren't quite to our liking. The real fun has been in reading the stories that accompany the recipes. We have been able to make many of the drinks with common, easy-to-find ingredients, but there are a few that we won't try because of very obscure or expensive ingredients, but despite this we have thoroughly enjoyed reading the stories.

There are only a couple negatives. I wish the index was better organized such that you could look up the drinks by ingredient. The names that the drinks are listed under don't give any clues about what is in it and it is very tedious to have to read through everything. It is also very evident throughout the book that Mr Haigh is a real snob when it comes to liquors; not sure why I would expect any different in this book, but it does show through his commentary. I find his snobbery rather amusing and interesting in itself, but my boyfriend seems to get annoyed by it and rolls his eyes. I suppose that is something that could annoy some people, but my advice is to just roll with it and enjoy your cocktail.

Stumbled across this book at barnes and noble and liked the format and layout and such as i love to cook: the spiral bound aspect makes it so easy to read, measure and mix with a hand's free book to guide me.

i have tried many of the formulas and have adapted many to my tastes, enjoying the fairest share of them. i highly recommend the book to anyone with some curiosity and pocketbook to shell out for many of the necessary ingredients.

the sheer variety of cocktails alone is worth it. but also the history behind each is fabulously entertaining. the forgotten part of the drinks themselves makes them even more enjoyable to drink. bravo!

This cocktail book is interesting. I just pick it up from time to time and read a few cocktail recipes and the history behind one of them.
In order to make any cocktail in this book, you're going to need to invest in some slightly obscure ingredients. I have not done this yet, but I do plan to in the future. I am sure I will be very pleased once I do that.

this is a review of the the store page that advertises this book as hardcover
Hardcover
Publisher: Quarry Books (October 1, 2009)
ASIN: B009CS9YIK
sometimes shopping in the the store market can be frustrating.
books is what they sell, but you cannot be shure of the edition you are receiving until you have the book itself in your hands.
this is not a review on this book, ABSOLUTELY SPECTACULAR BY THE WAY, but about the the store page.
I bough the, so called, hardcover edition, paying a really higher price & I received the spiral-bound edition, ISBN-13: 978-1592535613, that actually IS hardcover, but spiral-bound. you can find the hardcover/spiral-bound edition, sold at a very lower price, in the the store page that advertises this book as simply spiral-bound & in whose description you find the correct ISBN.
so, please be adviced that the page that sells this book as if the hardcover edition was a diffrent edition from the spiralbound is, at least, misleading.
typically the store market!
BUT THE BOOK ITSELF IS TERRIFIC! PLEASE GO TO THE RIGHT PAGE & BUY IT FOR LESS.
if you drink alcohol because it's liquid, this is not the book for you.
but if you fancy cocktails for the expanded universe of flavors they offer you, this book is a time-warp trip to cocktail madness! 5 stars

Nice little book with some intriguing descriptions of cocktails. I bought mine at a bookstore and it was hardback. If I bought it at the store and it was delivered soft cover I would be as upset as the last reviewer and return it not as advertised. This would make a great birthday or Christmas gift along with a nice bottle of unusual spirits.

I would highly recommend to anyone interested in cocktails! I bought this as a birthday gift for a dear friend who is very into the art of the cocktail, and Haigh makes the topic so interesting I wound up learning a thing or two myself as I flipped through the book. The pages and cover are high quality, the stories behind the cocktails are fascinating, and the writing is just plain fun! And for $12? It's a good buy.

How awesome! A book of recipes for "old time" cocktails not seen today! This was the perfect gift for a friend who loves to mix drinks for company! It even gives the history of each drink including the bar/restaurant that served it and the years it was popular. She loved it!