Cocktail Culture is a strong fizzy combo. Here is good humour and good liquor aplenty, with literary anecdotes, footnotes to history, and secret recipes all mixed to perfection by philosopher-badly Mark Kingwell, and served to you, chilled, with a elegant twist. Inside these pages, as in the smoothest saloon, great authors nuzzle up to great actors and knock back great drinks, whose kick will have you nicely oiled to sigh, flirt, banter and slide slowly under the table with the best of them: Chandler, Hemingway, Wodehouse, Amis, Fitzgerald, Hitchcock and Wilder. Like the sharpest cocktails, this is a book with just enough pop to snap your head back', and it is perhaps the most sparklingly written testimonial ever composed to this intoxicating subject.