The most recommended bartender books

When recommending books on drinking and drinking properly, not necessarily making drinks properly, there are few recent releases that cover this ground. Jeffrey’s fun primer on the basics of drinking, its culture, and traditions make this a great first floor requirement in the skyscraper of imbibing. I would add that this would be a perfect gift for novice enthusiasts as it will help dodge plenty of missteps for sure.

Ryan is undoubtedly the biggest name in cocktails right now. He has pioneered numerous venues in London and around the world focused on changing the way we think about bars and cocktails.

His book is not only a great entry into the world of cocktails with great classic recipes, but it also showcases interesting flavour combinations and techniques that can be used both in a bar and at home.

With recipes from renowned bars all over the world -- including Death & Co in Denver and NYC, Employees Only, The Aviary NYC, Broken Shaker in LA, Everleaf Drinks in London, and Little Red Door in Paris -- the book serves as the ultimate guide to making (and enjoying!) well-balanced non-alcoholic cocktails. The beverages are tasty, visual, creative, and fun to concoct, and will motivate you to stay dry for a month (and beyond).

Most reference books aren’t also entertaining reads. But this book manages to be both.

Written in 1948, it’s an in-depth guide to the taxonomy of classic cocktails–helping you distinguish your Sours from your Daisies–but written with a sense of humor and levity that other books lack. For a look into mid-century American cocktail culture, one of the cocktail world’s true golden ages, this is as good as it gets. 

So often, booze history has not been carefully written down, and Simonson wanted to ensure that would not be the case when it came to the cocktail renaissance that kicked off in the early 21st century.

Chapter by chapter, he introduces us to the players—bartenders, bar owners, producers, and reps—along with the bars that reinvigorated a nearly-dead American tradition of Martinis, Manhattans, Margaritas, and many more drinks that are now, thanks to them, ubiquitous everywhere on the globe.

I’ve spent more than a decade immersed in the cocktail world and writing about bar culture, mixology, and technique; John is an award-winning bartender himself. And yet when we have questions on cocktail technique, we always, always reach for this book.

Jeffrey Morgenthaler is a legend in the industry and, what’s more, he has a gift for clear instruction. Whatever our question, we’ll find an authoritative answer here. 

Now that you’re in the mood for a good classic cocktail, this book will teach you how to make one.

Death & Co: Modern Classic Cocktails is the bible for the modern craft cocktail movement. Written by the creators of the legendary New York City bar Death & Co, which is on my bucket list of bars to visit, the book teaches you everything you need to know to make a good cocktail, from which flavors pair well together, when to shake and when to stir, and how to come up with your own new cocktail.

The book contains 500 recipes and gorgeous photos that will make you want to take up mixology in your spare time. 

I had the distinct pleasure of visiting Tony Conigliaro’s Drink Factory laboratory in London where I found a mad scientist’s lair filled with complex, technical equipment, dry erase boards covered in formulas, and shelves of esoteric, bottled ingredients. While The Cocktail Lab finds a logical home in the era of molecular mixology, it is far more than that, showcasing its author as part chemist, part bartender, and part magician. First and foremost, the book captures what Conigliaro calls his “love affair with liquids”. The book’s cocktails – many of which I have tasted – are sensory experiences that capture not only flavors, but aromas, textures, and even memories. While modernizing many classic recipes, Conigliaro simultaneously pushes the definition of what a cocktail is and can be. For me, The Cocktail Lab celebrates the ever-evolving possibilities of liquid pleasure in the modern world and how a cocktail can be a transformative… show more.

This book took me on a journey that was both heart-wrenching and heart-warming.

Once I started reading, I was hooked. This romance is not what I expected. Both the heroine and hero had faced tragedy, and the book took me back in time as they remembered the things that completely changed the course of their lives.

By each asking the other just one thing at a time, the story took shape. Slowly, painfully, together they took the road forward and found comfort in each other. As comfort turned into love it was a gift neither ever expected. This small-town novel is absolutely unforgettable.

Pelecanos is the worst. Pelecanos is a bum. I hate George Pelecanos. Every time I read one of his novels I get depressed because I will never be as good as him. More modern existential hardcore PI fiction, the third novel in a triology set in DC, this one too blew me away with its vision of DC, which I had just quit for Philadelphia. But it’s not the DC you and I know of marble and monuments, posturing politicians and bright ties, bright young people, and great eateries. Shoegum Nick Stefanos prowls some very mean DC streets and alleys and slimy creeks while battling his own nature. He’s a barkeep, a drunk, a f**up. This novel showed me that thoroughly entertaining nihilistic crime fiction is alive and well. Have I mentioned I hate Pelecanos?