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› Find signed collectible books: 'Absinthe: History in a Bottle'
One hundred forty-four proof, notoriously addictive, and the drug of choice for nineteenth-century poets, absinthe is gaining bootleg popularity after almost a century of being banned. Due to popular demand, Absinthe: History in a Bottle is back in paperback with a handsome new cover. Like the author's bestselling The Martini and The Cigar, it is a potent brew of wild nights and social history, fact and trivia, gorgeous art and beautiful artifacts. As intoxicating as its subject, Absinthe makes a memorable gift for anyone who knows how to celebrate vice. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'After Writing Culture: Epistemology and Praxis in Contemporary Anthropology'
This collection addresses the theme of representation in anthropology. Its fourteen articles explore some of the directions in which contemporary anthropology is moving, following the questions raised by the "writing culture" debates of the 1980s.
It includes discussion of issues such as:
* the concept of caste in Indian society
* scottish ethnography
* how dreams are culturally conceptualised
* representations of the family
* culture as conservation
* gardens, theme parks and the anthropologist in Japan
* representation in rural Japan
* people's place in the landscape of Northern Australia
* representing identity of the New Zealand Maori. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Alcoholica Esoterica: A Collection of Useful And Useless Information As It Relates To The History and Consumption of All Manner of Booze'
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It's more than a book. It's a way of life.
Alcoholics Anonymous-The Big Book--has served as a lifeline to millions worldwide. First published in 1939, Alcoholics Anonymous sets forth cornerstone concepts of recovery from alcoholism and tells the stories of men and women who have overcome the disease. With publication of the second edition in 1955, the third edition in 1976, and now the fourth edition in 2001, the essential recovery text has remained unchanged while personal stories have been added to reflect the growing and diverse fellowship. The long-awaited fourth edition features 24 new personal stories of recovery.
Key features and benefits
·the most widely used resource for millions of individuals in recovery
·contains full, original text describing the A.A. program
·updated with 24 new personal stories
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![[???]: Alcoholics Anonymous: Mini Edition [???]: Alcoholics Anonymous: Mini Edition](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/1892959011.01._SL160_SCLZZZZZZZ__.jpg)
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Hard cover reproduction of the first printing of the first edition of Alcoholics Anonymous.
An affordable reproduction of the original Big Bookî.
Includes a reproduction of the original dustjacket.
Compared to the original this reproduction has the same content and appearance but is not as thick.
"Reproduction published by The Anonymous Press" has been added to the book cover, dustjacket and title page.
î"Big Book" has been registered as a trademark by AA World Service Inc. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Bajo El Volcan'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Bartending for Dummies'
When you are serving drinks at a bar, you should have at least basic knowledge of about 200 of the most popular cocktails in your head. A cocktail is, according to Webster's New World Dictionary, any of various alcoholic drinks made of a distilled liquor mixed as with wine, fruit juice, or soda water and usually iced. There are thousands of different drink mixes with thousands of different names that people desire.
Whether you are planning a small cocktail party at your home, planning to start a new career, or just want to know how to make a given drink, Bartending For Dummies offers a wonderful place to start. This clearly written, easy-to-understand guide can help anyone to
This book takes the mystery out of mixology. Can you put together a perfect martini? Or create the consummate cosmopolitan? From classic drinks to today's coolest cocktails, this comprehensive A-to-Z guide shows you how to mix up whatever libations you or your guests might desire.
Bartending For Dummies also covers the following topics and more:
There are thousands of bars around the world stocked with everything from beer to vodka. Bartending For Dummies is the ingredient that no bar should be without. This book can help you to be that impressive bartender by showing you everything you need to know about tending a bar. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Complete Bartender'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Complete Joy of Home Brewing'
japan import [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Complete World Bartender Guide'
The Biggest and Best if its Kind
The standard reference to more than 2,400 drinks
Including nonalcoholic drinks
Plus drinks for dieters
Every recipe illustrated with proper glass
Learn how to create the perfect drink for every occasion
You dont need to take a mixology course to master the art of mixing drinks with style and confidence. All you need to know is in the Complete World Bartender Guide. From classic cocktails to little-known concoctions, this comprehensive reference contains easy-to-follow recipes for more than 2,400 drinks that will make you the toast of any party. This indispensable resource also includes:
" Handy tips on setting up your bar and buying the right amount of liquor and supplies
" Illustrations of proper glassware next to each recipe
" Instructions for brewing beer
" Professional tricks and shortcuts
" Drinks for dieters
" More than 200 recipes for delicious nonalcoholic drinks
" Expert advice on selecting and serving wine
" And much more!
The ultimate bar-top reference
[via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Complete World Bartender Guide: The Standard Reference to 2000 Drinks'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cordials from Your Kitchen'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cordials from Your Kitchen: Easy, Elegant Liqueurs You Can Make and Give'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Craze : Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason'
Rotgut gincheap, widely available, and remarkably potentwas the overwhelming drug of choice among Londons working poor in the early 1700s. Sold for pennies in taverns and squalid gin shops, on street corners and even in jails, gin was the original opiate of the masses, plunging Englands capital into chaos and giving rise to the first modern drug scare. Craze is an engaging social history of gin and the men and women whose lives it touched: the poor who drank it, the distillers who made it, the members of Parliament who feared it, and the prime minister who relied on its tax revenues to line his pockets. Offering a rich political, social, and economic history of gin and the London of Hogarth and Dr. Johnson, Craze will intoxicate you with its blend of erudition, style, and wit. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dictionary of Drink'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Drink: A Social History of America'
"It is not generally appreciated how extreme American attitudes about alcohol appear from the other side of the Atlantic."
With an opening line such as that, it's not surprising that Drink: A Social History of America engages in its share of Yankee-bashing. British journalist Andrew Barr's look at American culture through a glass (somewhat blearily) is an attempt "to understand the history of the United States through its attitudes to liquor and its changing tastes in drink." In reality, however, Barr lurches and staggers from topic to topic--from prohibition to martinis to ice to air conditioning to bland American beer in one 10-page sample--in this swirling cocktail party of a book. That's not to say that Barr's book isn't enjoyable--in fact, it's often delightful. Barr serves up amusing stories (such as that of poor King Charles II of Navarre, immolated in an alcohol-soaked sheet), interesting factoids (the first grapevines in California were planted at the San Juan Capistrano mission in 1779), and strong opinions. Some of his opinions are funny, some are bound to raise hackles (that alcoholism is not a disease, but a "failure of personality," for example), while others are somewhat sensible but destined to be unpopular. Barr feels that Americans have an unhealthy relationship with alcohol, so we should teach young people (and those who drink to excess) to drink sensibly, worry less about pregnant women having the occasional drink and more about prenatal care, and switch the focus from stricter drunk-driving laws to laws aimed at reducing dangers such as cell-phone use and road rage. Just when things get too serious, however, Barr is off again in another direction with another witty snippet. Unfortunately, like many partygoers, Barr tends to repeat himself--frequent footnotes direct the reader to "See Chapter 4," "See Chapter 4 again," or even "See Chapter 4 once more." Perfect for browsing or ingesting in small doses, too much Drink in one sitting may leave readers with a headache. --C.B. Delaney [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Drinking: A Love Story'
The roots of alcoholism in the life of a brilliant daughter of an upper-class family are explored in this stylistic, literary memoir of drinking by a Massachusetts journalist. Caroline Knapp describes how the distorted world of her well-to-do parents pushed her toward anexoria and then alcoholism. Fittingly, it was literature that saved her: She found inspiration in Pete Hamill's A Drinking Life and sobered up. Her tale is spiced with the characters she's known along the way. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Drinking With Calvin and Luther!: A History of Alcohol in the Church'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dry: A Memoir'
Fans of Augusten Burroughs's darkly funny memoir Running with Scissors were left wondering at the end of that book what would become of young Augusten after his squalid and fascinating childhood ended. In Dry, we find that although adult Augusten is doing well professionally, earning a handsome living as an ad writer for a top New York agency, Burroughs's personal life is a disaster. His apartment is a sea of empty Dewar's bottles, he stays out all night boozing, and he dabs cologne on his tongue in an unsuccessful attempt to mask the stench of alcohol on his breath at work. When his employer insists he seek help, Burroughs ships out to Minnesota for detoxification, counseling, and amusingly told anecdotes about the use of stuffed animals in group therapy. But after a month of such treatment, he's back in Manhattan and tenuously sober. And while its one thing to lay off the sauce in rehab, Burroughs learns that it's quite another to resume your former life while avoiding the alcohol that your former life was based around. This quest to remain sober is made dramatically more difficult, and the tale more harrowing, when Burroughs begins an ill-advised romance with a crack addict. Certainly the "recovered alcoholic fighting to stay sober" tale is not new territory for a memoirist. But Burroughs's account transcends clichés: it doesn't adhere to the traditional "temptation narrowly resisted" storyline and it features, in Burroughs himself, a central character that is sympathetic even when he's neither likable nor admirable. But what ultimately makes this memoir such a terrific read is a brilliant and candid sense of humor that manages to stay dry even when recalling events where the author was anything but. --John Moe [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Factotum'
One of Charles Bukowski's best, this beer-soaked, deliciously degenerate novel follows the wanderings of aspiring writer Henry Chinaski across World War II-era America. Deferred from military service, Chinaski travels from city to city, moving listlessly from one odd job to another, always needing money but never badly enough to keep a job. His day-to-day existence spirals into an endless litany of pathetic whores, sordid rooms, dreary embraces, and drunken brawls, as he makes his bitter, brilliant way from one drink to the next.
Charles Bukowski's posthumous legend continues to grow. Factotum is a masterfully vivid evocation of slow-paced, low-life urbanity and alcoholism, and an excellent introduction to the fictional world of Charles Bukowski.
[via]› Find signed collectible books: 'Fiesta'

› Find signed collectible books: 'God Gave Wine: What the Bible Says About Alcohol'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hangover Square'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Joke's Over: Bruised Memories Gonzo, Hunter S. Thompson, and Me'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lunar Park'
Then imagine having a second chance ten years later, as the Bret Easton Ellis of this remarkable novel is given, with a wife, children, and suburban sobriety--only to watch this new life shatter beyond recognition in a matter of days. At a fateful Halloween party he glimpses a disturbing (fictional) character driving a car identical to his late father's, his stepdaughter's doll violently "malfunctions," and their house undergoes bizarre transformations both within and without. Connecting these aberrations to graver events--a series of grotesque murders that no longer seem random and the epidemic disappearance of boys his sons age--Ellis struggles to defend his family against this escalating menace even as his wife, their therapists, and the police insist that his apprehensions are rooted instead in substance abuse and egomania.
Lunar Park confounds one expectation after another, passing through comedy and mounting horror, both psychological and supernatural, toward an astonishing resolution--about love and loss, fathers and sons--in what is surely the most powerfully original and deeply moving novel of an extraordinary career.
In his novel Lunar Park, Bret Easton Ellis takes first-person narrative to an extreme, inserting himself (and a host of real characters from the publishing world) into the haunting story of a drugged-out famous writer living in the suburbs trying to reconnect with his wife and son and reconcile his damaged past. Ellis is at the top of his game in Lunar Park, his first novel since 1999's Glamorama, delivering a disturbing and delirious novel about celebrity, writers, and fathers and sons (not to mention a cameo from notorious Ellis creation, Patrick Bateman). Amazon.com senior editor Brad Thomas Parsons spoke with Ellis in a Seattle to Los Angeles phone call to talk about the fact and fiction behind Lunar Park, New York versus LA, '80s music, and the whole "American Psycho thing." 
Ellis on Ellis: "I don't think it's a perfect book by any means, but it's valid. I get where it comes from. I get what it is. There's a lot of it that I wish was slightly more elegantly written. Overall, I was pretty shocked. It was pretty good writing for someone who was 19."
A line-up of Camden College students share the narrating duties in The Rules of Attraction, Ellis' sex-fueled, drug-baked second novel. There's Lauren (who's in the midst of losing her virginity as the book opens), who longs for her boyfriend Victor, currently traveling through Europe; Lauren's ex, Paul, a bisexual party boy who hooks up with hard-drinking closet-case Sean (surname Bateman--that's right, younger brother of Patrick), who also has the hots for Lauren. Less than Zero's Clay makes a cameo appearance as well as a passing glimpse of Ellis' Bennington classmate Donna Tartt's murderous Classics majors from The Secret History. Ellis on Ellis: "It might be my favorite book of mine. I was writing that book while I was at college. Sort of like the best of times, the worst of times. There was a lot of elation, there was a lot of despair. It was just a really fun book to write. I loved mimicking all the different voices. The stream of conscious does get a little out of hand. I kind of like that about the book. It's kind of all over the place. It's casual. It's scruffy. That's the one book of mine that I have a very, very soft spot for."
Shopaholic sociopath Patrick Bateman's killer grip drags readers into a bloody, brand-name, urban nightmare as the 26-year-old Wall Street yuppie executes his grooming habits and eviscerates strangers with equal élan. Simon & Schuster dropped the too-hot-to-handle American Psycho which was then published as a paperback original by Vintage Books. Ellis received death threats while the book was boycotted, sliced up by reviewers, and went on to become a bestseller. Mary Harron's 2000 film version starred then little-known British actor Christian Bale, who would later suit up as the Dark Knight in 2005's Batman Begins. Ellis on Ellis: "It was good. It was fun. It was not nearly as pretentious as I remember I wanted it to be when I was writing it. I found it really fast-moving. I found it really funny. And I liked it a lot. The violence was... it made my toes curl. I really freaked out. I couldn't believe how violent it was. It was truly upsetting. I had to steel myself to re-read those passages."
Ellis returns to early '80s Los Angeles ennui with The Informers, a loosely connected collection of stories of the bored, rich, and morally depraved, written around the same time as Less than Zero. Sex, drugs, and gratuitous violence take center stage, with characters including an aging, predatory anchorwoman, a debauched rock star tearing through Japan, and a pick-up artist vampire. While some of the vignettes echo better Ellis works, ultimately the stories don't add to much as a whole. Book critics are less than receptive to Ellis' post-American Psycho offering. Ellis on Ellis: "Those were written while I was at Bennington. I wrote a lot of short stories between 1981 or 1982 or so... The Informers more or less kind of represented probably the best of those stories. I wrote a lot of really bad ones, but those are the ones that worked the best together."
Actor-model Victor Ward (who first made an appearance in the Ellis oeuvre in The Rules of Attraction) is the narrator of Glamorama, Ellis longest novel yet. Ellis offers bold-faced names and celebrity skewering in the first half of the book as Victor tries to open a Manhattan club while cheating on his supermodel girlfriend and double-crossing his partner, but the second half takes a violent, paranoid turn as Victor is sent to England and unwittingly lured into a sadistic ring of international terrorists (posing as supermodels) leaving a bloody trail across the globe. Ellis on Ellis: "[T]he book wasn't necessarily about terrorism to me. It was about a whole bunch of other stuff. It's definitely the book that I can tell--I don't know if other people can tell but I can tell as a writer--is probably the most divisive that I've written. It has an equal number of detractors as it does fans. It doesn't really hold true with the other books. It was the one that took the longest to write, and the one that seemed the most important at the time. It's an unwieldy book... I like it."
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| ![]() American Psycho | ![]() The Rules of Attraction |
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Million Little Pieces'
News from Doubleday & Anchor Books
The controversy over James Frey's A Million Little Pieces has caused serious concern at Doubleday and Anchor Books. Recent interpretations of our previous statement notwithstanding, it is not the policy or stance of this company that it doesnt matter whether a book sold as nonfiction is true. A nonfiction book should adhere to the facts as the author knows them.
It is, however, Doubleday and Anchor's policy to stand with our authors when accusations are initially leveled against their work, and we continue to believe this is right and proper. A publisher's relationship with an author is based to an extent on trust. Mr. Frey's repeated representations of the book's accuracy, throughout publication and promotion, assured us that everything in it was true to his recollections. When the Smoking Gun report appeared, our first response, given that we were still learning the facts of the matter, was to support our author. Since then, we have questioned him about the allegations and have sadly come to the realization that a number of facts have been altered and incidents embellished.
We bear a responsibility for what we publish, and apologize to the reading public for any unintentional confusion surrounding the publication of A Million Little Pieces.
I want a drink. I want fifty drinks. I want a bottle of the purest, strongest, most destructive, most poisonous alcohol on Earth. I want fifty bottles of it. I want crack, dirty and yellow and filled with formaldehyde. I want a pile of powder meth, five hundred hits of acid, a garbage bag filled with mushrooms, a tube of glue bigger than a truck, a pool of gas large enough to drown in. I want something anything whatever however as much as I can.
One of the more harrowing sections is when Frey submits to major dental surgery without the benefit of anesthesia or painkillers (he fights the mind-blowing waves of "bayonet" pain by digging his fingers into two old tennis balls until his nails crack). His fellow patients include a damaged crack addict with whom Frey wades into an ill-fated relationship, a federal judge, a former championship boxer, and a mobster (who, upon his release, throws a hilarious surf-and-turf bacchanal, complete with pay-per-view boxing). In the book's epilogue, when Frey ticks off a terse update on everyone, you can almost hear the Jim Carroll Band's brutal survivor's lament "People Who Died" kicking in on the soundtrack of the inevitable film adaptation.
The rage-fueled memoir is kept in check by Frey's cool, minimalist style. Like his steady mantra, "I am an Alcoholic and I am a drug Addict and I am a Criminal," Frey's use of repetition takes on a crisp, lyrical quality which lends itself to the surreal experience. The book could have benefited from being a bit leaner. Nearly 400 pages is a long time to spend under Frey's influence, and the stylistic acrobatics (no quotation marks, random capitalization, left-aligned text, wild paragraph breaks) may seem too self-conscious for some readers, but beyond the literary fireworks lurks a fierce debut. --Brad Thomas Parsons
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Modern Drunkard'
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New Inside & Out ..Unread.... A must Have, If you need......Mr. Boston official bartender's guide (Hardcover) by Leo Cotton (Author).Different Edition: Same ISBN: Hardcover; Warner Books, New York, 1984. The All New 50th Anniversary Edition, this 271-page book is bound in red leatherette with black and gilt embossed title to spine and front Cover.Publisher:Warner Books, New York, 1984. The All New 50th Anniversary First Edition.Has Number Line ..I Ship Fast, Direct from our warehouse ,In a Box, Bubble wrapped , with FREE U.S.P.S. delivery confirmation [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mr Boston Official Bartender's Guide'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mr. Boston: Official Bartender's and Party Guide'
For more than 60 years, Mr. Boston has been mixing drinks for amateurs and professionals alike. A definitive drink directory, "Mr. Boston Official Bartender's & Party Guide" is the bartender's bible, and now contains more invaluable information than ever before. From new, trendy drink recipes such as the "Cosmopolitan" to useful facts about single malt scotches along with a special liquor, wine, and beer directory, this new, updated version is still a classic...with a modern twist. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mr. Boston Official Bartender's Guide'
IN STOCK! READY TO SHIP! New crisp copy, tight, clean, hard cover! USPS Shipping Confirmation provided at no additional cost to you! [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'New York Bartender's Guide : Fifty Drink Recipes for the Professional and the Home'
Newly revised and expanded, The New York Bartenders Guide includes even more tips, trends, and tasty recipes from the hottest bars in New York City. Featuring more than 1,300 alcoholic and non-alcoholic drink recipes, theres something here for everyone, whether its the hottest vodka cocktail or the most traditional egg cream. Find out the latest trends from top bartenders, get tips on how to serve drinks either professionally or at home, and make some of the most delicious potables New York City has to offer. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The New American Bartender's Guide'
The New American Bartender's Guide features:
RECIPES INCLUDE:
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing'
"Relax. Don't Worry. Have a home-brew." It's the mantra of home-brewing, a phrase that nods to the technical aspects of brewing only as it dismisses all stress with a sip and a smile. Home-brewing is fun, after all. Charlie Papazian didn't just coin the term, he virtually spearheaded the home-brewing revival in America. Figurehead for the American Homebrewers Association and its membership magazine, Zymurgy, Papazian is one of the founding fathers of the modern home-brewing scene.
Often touted as the home-brewer's bible, The New Complete Joy of Homebrewing charts a beginning brewer's course, keeping the focus on enjoying the process as well as the results of home-brewing. An easy-to-use table of ingredients helps the newly initiated design their own recipes, although many home-brewers happily spend years sampling those Papazian provides. Dozens of recipes for all levels of experience are here, christened with the most improbable (and irresistible?) names in home-brewing literature ("Toad Spit Stout," "Cheeks to the Wind Mild," and "Goat Scrotum Ale" among them).
While Papazian's classic does cover a broad sweep of home-brewing techniques (including more advanced procedures like grain mashing and yeast culturing), it's more than just a home-brewer's guidebook. Papazian's personal take on the history of American brewing is an entertaining read for any beer enthusiast, and his laid-back, humor-driven style engages readers whether or not they've ever boiled up a brew. This book makes home-brewers almost as often as it helps them. If enthusiastic friends haven't convinced you to start home-brewing, The New Complete Joy of Homebrewing undoubtedly will. --Todd Gehman [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Paper Moon'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Second Oldest Profession: An Informal History of Moonshining in America'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood'
From earliest experimentation to habitual excess to full-blown abuse, twenty-four-year-old Koren Zailckas leads us through her experience of a terrifying trend among young girls, exploring how binge drinking becomes routine, how it becomes "the usual." With the stylistic freshness of a poet and the dramatic gifts of a novelist, Zailckas describes her first sip at fourteen, alcohol poisoning at sixteen, a blacked-out sexual experience at nineteen, total disorientation after waking up in an unfamiliar New York City apartment at twenty-two, when she realized she had to stop, and all the depression, rage, troubled friendships, and sputtering romantic connections in between. Zailckas's unflinching candor and exquisite analytical eye gets to the meaning beneath the seeming banality of girls' getting drunk. She persuades us that her story is the story of thousands of girls like her who are not alcoholics-yet-but who use booze as a short cut to courage, a stand-in for good judgment, and a bludgeon for shyness, each of them failing to see how their emotional distress, unarticulated hostility, and depression are entangled with their socially condoned binging. Like the contemporary masterpieces The Liars' Club, Autobiography of a Face, and Jarhead, Smashed is destined to become a classic. A crucial book for any woman who has succumbed to oblivion through booze, or for anyone ready to face the more subtle repercussions of their own chronic over-drinking or of someone they love, Smashed is an eye-opening, wise, and utterly gripping achievement. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Tender Bar: A Memoir'
"Long before it legally served me, the bar saved me," asserts J.R. Moehringer, and his compelling memoir The Tender Bar is the story of how and why. A Pulitzer-Prize winning writer for the Los Angeles Times, Moehringer grew up fatherless in pub-heavy Manhasset, New York, in a ramshackle house crammed with cousins and ruled by an eccentric, unkind grandfather. Desperate for a paternal figure, he turns first to his father, a DJ whom he can only access via the radio (Moehringer calls him The Voice and pictures him as "talking smoke"). When The Voice suddenly disappears from the airwaves, Moehringer turns to his hairless Uncle Charlie, and subsequently, Uncle Charlie's place of employment--a bar called Dickens that soon takes center stage. While Moehringer may occasionally resort to an overwrought metaphor (the footsteps of his family sound like "storm troopers on stilts"), his writing moves at a quick clip and his tale of a dysfunctional but tightly knit community is warmly told. "While I fear that we're drawn to what abandons us, and to what seems most likely to abandon us, in the end I believe we're defined by what embraces us," Moehringer says, and his story makes us believe it. --Brangien Davis [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Ulises / Ulysses'
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Ultimate A-To-Z Bar Guide'
What's a Dirty Martini? How do you pronounce Cuarenta Y Tres? Which glass do you use for a Stinger? How did the Margarita get its name?
Answers to these questions and thousands more can be found in The Ultimate A-to-Z Bar Guide, a one-stop, user-friendly cocktail guide featuring more than 1,000 drink recipes and 600 definitions for cocktail-related terms.
The Ultimate A-to-Z Bar Guide offers a unique blend of features, including:
Definitions of over 600 cocktail- and drink-related terms, including liqueurs, types of drinks, cocktail jargon, and the etymology of drinks like the Martini and the Fuzzy Navel, all organized in an easy-to-use A-to-Z format with sound-out phonetics.
Drink recipes for more than 1,000 cocktails for every season and occasion. Each recipe is complete with a graphic showing the appropriate glass to use.
Ideas on how to make sure guests have a great time while encouraging responsible drinking.
Tips on everything from stocking a home bar to choosing the right glassware, plus loads of professional bartending tricks and shortcuts for creating the perfect cocktail.
Humor through anecdotes, toasts, and quotes from the famous and infamous.
Four indexes that make finding the listing you want a snap!
Accessible, fun, hip, and written in the Herbsts' inimitable style, The Ultimate A-to-Z Bar Guide deserves a place at every home and professional bar. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Under the Volcano'
Regardless of what his apologists say, Under the Volcano is Malcolm Lowry's only wholly successful book. Fortunately, it is a masterpiece. Reading it is like willingly submitting yourself to a bout of delirium tremens, with all of the disorientation, terror, and pity that that implies. Under the Volcano isn't an easy book to get through; it is extravagantly lurid and deeply allusive, and its protagonist, Consul Geoffrey Firmin, is a hopeless wreck of a human being. Nonetheless, Lowry's seemingly self-indulgent horrors are justified by the immense power of his fiction.
Under the Volcano takes place in Quahnahac, Mexico, on the Day of the Dead in November 1939, in the shadow of European war. Firmin is in the process of violently drinking himself to death, alternately cowering in the comfort of his few, half-estranged friends and lashing out at them. His ex-wife, Yvonne, has returned from her flight to the United States to attempt to bring Firmin back into line. His younger brother, Hugh, wishes to slip over to Spain to join the last feeble resistance against Franco's fascist government. Firmin's long, doomed day is a progress through metaphysical dread and faint hopes of redemption--hopes that are always dashed by politics, mescal, and the failure of love.
This is one of the handful of fictions that gave the 20th century the Infernos it so urgently deserved. Lowry's attention to the Second World War is oblique, almost evasive, but Under the Volcano somehow remains one of the best literary attempts to grapple with modernity's most terrible moment. Indispensable. --Jack Illingworth [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Whisk(E)Y'
The history of whiskey is shrouded in some mystery. First produced in the Middle Ages, it has gained a worldwide audience and is produced from Ireland to India. For the whiskey connoisseur, no library would be complete without this fascinating look at the world of whiskey (as it is spelled in Ireland and the United States--Scotland and Canada spell it "whisky"). With more than 1,000 entries on everything from individual brands to the history of single-malt scotch, Whisk(e)y will appeal to aficionados and novices alike. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Wine Bible'
Though it drinks deep of its subject, Karen MacNeil's Wine Bible deftly avoids two traps many wine books fall into: talking down to wine novices or talking up to more experienced enophiles. The book avoids these traps through MacNeil's obvious, and infectious, love of her subject, which comes out in almost every sentence of the book, and which lets her talk about wine in a way that combines the good teacher, the trusted friend, and the expert sommelier. As director of the wine program at the Culinary Institute of America in Napa Valley, California, MacNeil is one of the world's true experts on wine. After reading a chapter on the Burgenland, for example, you've learned about the region's sweet wines while feeling like you're actually there, toasting a glass of Cuvee Suss with the author. It is this passion that leads to describing an Italian riservas as "mesmerizing" and a Cabernet Sauvignon as having "texture like cashmere."
The Wine Bible is broken into countries, hitting all of the major wine producers and most of the minor ones. Each section gives detailed descriptions of the country's wines (with chapters on individual regions when necessary), highlighting specific wine producers and individual wines, as well as talking about local foods, customs, and other tidbits that add to the reading experience. MacNeil begins her journey through the world's wine with an invaluable section on "Mastering Wine," which lets a reader get ready before uncorking separate sections. --A.J. Rathbun [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Women'
Low-life writer and unrepentant alcoholic Henry Chinaski was born to survive. After decades of slacking off at low-paying dead-end jobs, blowing his cash on booze and women, and scrimping by in flea-bitten apartments, Chinaski sees his poetic star rising at last. Now, at fifty, he is reveling in his sudden rock-star life, running three hundred hangovers a year, and maintaining a sex life that would cripple Casanova.
With all of Bukowski's trademark humor and gritty, dark honesty, this 1978 follow-up to Post Office and Factotum is an uncompromising account of life on the edge.
[via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'The World Atlas of Wine'
This is something of a dream-team production. The names of Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson are self-recommending for any book on which they appear: their unprecedented collaboration on The World Atlas of Wine is a guarantee of the most distinguished and intelligent writing on the subject... so it proves. The fifth edition (in 30 years) of this astonishingly successful book lives up to, and surpasses, its predecessors. In 350 densely packed but never clotted pages the authors manage the extraordinary feat of characterising wine production throughout the world, from Vancouver Island to Japan--for Buddhists first planted vines in that inhospitably precipitous, monsoon-lashed land over a thousand years ago. After a substantial introductory section dealing with the history of wine, its making, storage and enjoyment, we're off. Starting (where else?) with France and Burgundy. Each wine area is summarised in terms of its geography, climate and preferred vines; and the appellations, laws and traditions that govern production. The discussion of Pomerol, for example, tells you a great deal in one short page. Even since 1994, when the fourth edition came out, vast changes have swept the wine world, and many parts of the atlas have been correspondingly completely reworked. South America and Canada, Southern France and Italy, Greece, Eastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean are among areas that have benefited. The regional maps which form the core of the book are a triumph of clarity. The whole production constitutes a brilliant achievement of organisation and synthesis, forming an indispensable resource for any wine lover at all interested in where the wine they drink comes from and why it tastes the way it does. --Robin Davidson [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The World Atlas of Wine: A Complete Guide to the Wines & Spirits of the World'
The World Atlas of Wine is something of a dream-team production. The names Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson alone recommend any book on which they appear. The fifth edition (in 30 years) of this astonishingly successful book lives up to, and surpasses, its predecessors. In 350 densely packed but never clotted pages the authors manage the extraordinary feat of characterizing wine production throughout the world, from Vancouver Island to Japan--Buddhists first planted vines in that inhospitably precipitous, monsoon-lashed land over a 1,000 years ago. After a substantial introductory section dealing with the history of wine, its making, storage, and enjoyment, we're off. Starting with (where else?) France and Burgundy, each wine area is summarized in terms of its geography, climate, and preferred vines and the appellations, laws, and traditions that govern production. The discussion of Pomerol, for example, tells you a great deal in one short page. Even since 1994, when the fourth edition came out, vast changes have swept the wine world, and many parts of the atlas have been correspondingly completely reworked. South America, Canada, Southern France, Italy, Greece, Eastern Europe, and the Eastern Mediterranean are among the areas that have benefited. The regional maps that form the core of the book are a triumph of clarity. The whole production constitutes a brilliant achievement of organization and synthesis, forming an indispensable resource for any wine lover at all interested in where the wine they drink comes from and why it tastes the way it does. --Robin Davidson, Amazon.co.uk [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'En Mil Pedazos/a Million Pieces'
Intense, unpredictable, and instantly engaging, A Million Little Pieces is a story of drug and alcohol abuse and rehabilitation as it has never been told before. Recounted in visceral, kinetic prose, and crafted with a forthrightness that rejects goodness, cynicism, and self-pity, it brings us face-to-face with a provocative new understanding of the nature of addiction and the meaning of recovery. A Million Little Pieces is the fight between one young mans will and the ever-tempting chemical trip to oblivion, the fight to survive on his own terms, for reasons close to his own heart.
Description in Spanish: Imagina que te despiertas en un avión. No tienes ni idea de dónde has estado ni de adónde vas. No recuerdas nada de las dos últimas semanas. Imagina que te faltan cuatro dientes, que tienes la nariz rota y una herida en la mejilla. Imagina que vas sin cartera, sin dinero, y no tienes trabajo. Imagina que te está buscando la policía. Imagina que eres alcohólico desde hace diez años y adicto al crack desde hace tres. ¿Qué harías?
A los veintitrés años, James Frey ingresó en un centro de desintoxicación. Destruido física y mentalmente de forma casi irremediable, debía enfrentarse a una difícil decisión: aceptar que no llegaría a cumplir los veinticuatro, o cambiar drásticamente el curso de su vida. Rodeado de pacientes en la misma situación entre los que había un juez, un pandillero, un boxeador que había sido campeón mundial y una frágil ex prostituta, Frey luchó contra el dogma de «Cómo recuperarse» para conseguir encontrar su propio camino, y decidir qué futuro, si le esperaba alguno, era el que quería alcanzar.
Aclamado por la crítica como todo un fenómeno literario y best seller desde los primeros días de su publicación, En mil pedazos es el testimonio inusualmente sincero de un hombre cuyo furioso impulso de autodestrucción sólo es comparable a su inagotable deseo de sobrevivir. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Erecciones, Eyaculaciones, Exhibiciones'
Este es el primer libro publicado en Espana de un autor entonces desconocido, que alcanzo rapido gran popularidad. En pocos anos paso de escritor maldito a leyenda viviente. Los relatos de este libro parecen extraidos de las tripas ulcerosas de su narrador, escritos entre ataques de delirium tremens, orgias y fantasias alcoholicas, con el crudo lenguaje de la calle como nadie lo habia hecho. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Escritos De Un Viejo Indecente'
Con sus relatos, reunidos en este volumen, escritos en total libertad, el autor se convirtió de inmediato en una celebridad, una "leyenda viviente" cuya fama fue aumentando vertiginosamente con la publicación de sus otros libros de relatos y poemas. Con su brutalidad, su salvaje y tierno sentido del humor, su tremenda sinceridad, Bukowski consigue, con su estilo descarnado y escueto, conectar inmediatamente con el lector. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Ulises / Ulysses'
"el orondo Buck Mulligan llegó por el hueco de la escalera, portando un cuenco lleno de espuma sobre el que un espejo y una navaja de afeitar se cruzaban. Un batín amarillo, desatado, se ondulaba delicadamente a su espalda en el aire apacible de la mañana. Elevó el cuenco y entonó: -Introibo ad altare Dei." [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Die Legende Vom Heiligen Trinker'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mensch Und Graphologie'
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