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The Martini: An Illustrated History of an American Classic
A chilled, crystal glass; the purest gin; a touch of dry vermouth--vigorously shaken, not stirred--and a plump, green olive. The Martini was and still is more than just a cocktail.
Originally mixed in the nineteenth century, it became an American icon in the twentieth, and the favorite drink of such luminaries as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Jack London, and Ernest Hemingway. Bernard De Voto called the Martini "the supreme American gift to world culture," while H. L. Mencken declared it "the only American invention as perfect as a sonnet."
The first book of its kind to explore the drink's wide appeal, this volume serves up a fabulous cocktail of Martini-inspired art, cartoons, collectibles, advertisements, and film stills that reveal how deeply this classic has permeated every aspect of American culture, from literature and film to politics and high society.
Complete with bartending lore, traditional Martini recipes, literary excerpts, memorable scenes from James Bond movies, and more, The Martini offers a toast to this intoxicating symbol of the American dream.
Originally mixed in the nineteenth century, it became an American icon in the twentieth, and the favorite drink of such luminaries as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Jack London, and Ernest Hemingway. Bernard De Voto called the Martini "the supreme American gift to world culture," while H. L. Mencken declared it "the only American invention as perfect as a sonnet."
The first book of its kind to explore the drink's wide appeal, this volume serves up a fabulous cocktail of Martini-inspired art, cartoons, collectibles, advertisements, and film stills that reveal how deeply this classic has permeated every aspect of American culture, from literature and film to politics and high society.
Complete with bartending lore, traditional Martini recipes, literary excerpts, memorable scenes from James Bond movies, and more, The Martini offers a toast to this intoxicating symbol of the American dream.
132 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 1995
61 people want to read
About the author
Barnaby Conrad III
13 books4 followersBarnaby Conrad III is an American author, artist, and editor.
NB: Son of writer/bullfighter/raconteur Barnaby Conrad.
NB: Son of writer/bullfighter/raconteur Barnaby Conrad.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
February 25, 2017
What a very enjoyable & informative read this turned out to be. From the martini's history to its appearance in films & literature, there plenty of amusing stories about this wonderful drink & numerous photographs to accompany the text.
The only thing missing for me was one of my favourite lines from the James Bond film Never Say Never Again. Fatima Blush (having just been water skiing) collides into 007....
FATIMA BLUSH: Oh, I've made you all wet.
JAMES BOND: Yes, but at least my martini's still dry.
It seems writing this review has given me a thirst.....I think I need a martini.
The only thing missing for me was one of my favourite lines from the James Bond film Never Say Never Again. Fatima Blush (having just been water skiing) collides into 007....
FATIMA BLUSH: Oh, I've made you all wet.
JAMES BOND: Yes, but at least my martini's still dry.
It seems writing this review has given me a thirst.....I think I need a martini.
January 21, 2020
This is really a love letter from the author to the classic gin & vermouth cocktail. Decorated with many images of martinis in film and art it explores history without attempting anything definitive and nods toward trendy variations of each era while always circling back to traditional expression and portrayal. This is an educational and delightful biography of the classic cocktail.
September 19, 2019
“The martini is the supreme American gift to world culture.” ~ Bernard De Voto, literary critic of the 20th century.
And if that’s all we’ve given the world then we’ve done our part this coffee table book argues. The Martini is a must have for any American living room that has a minibar atop the Victrola.
We’re taken back to a time in America when drinking a Martini meant that you either had arrived or were well on your way. It contains a wonderful quote from Christopher Buckley’s book Thank You for Smoking which presents this ideal with a splash of wit and a pony of cynicism:
“You could drink hard liquor in the middle of a school day without people assuming you were an alcoholic underachiever. Strange how in America in the 1950s, at the height of its industrial and imperial power, men drank double-martinis for lunch. Now, in its decline, they drank fizzy water. Somewhere something had gone terribly wrong.”
Everything old is new again and the Martini makes a comeback every few decades. It had a resurgence in the ‘80s, only with vodka. (The book touches on James Bond but doesn’t make the mistake of immortalizing him in Martini lore since he didn’t take his with gin.)
Many movie characters drank Martinis long before 007 unsheathed his PPK. WC Fields was notorious off the set, Bette Davis in All About Eve, The Thin Man, and Charles Butterworth who may have been the first to say “You ought to get out of those wet clothes and into a dry martini,” although others have been credited with saying it first.
The book yearns for a time when the Martini represented America and we didn’t take everything so seriously and we were united in the America spirit, both left and right. It’s a book with art, retro advertisements, New Yorker comics (yes those high-brow ones), quips on the Martini, and everyone from politics, literature, to Hollywood who has ever hoisted a see-through.
It’s not a recipe book, it only contains one recipe which of course is the standard of gin and vermouth. The author would never dream of speckling recipe asides for cosmopolitans and appletinis, which no Martini snob would ever imbibe on.
A coffee table book is the perfect venue for this subject. A 300 page rambling on every aspect would kill the allure, and if you’re drinking a Martini while reading it, you’ll probably just get through a few pages anyways so the more pictures, the better.
I particularly enjoyed the chapter on politics. The most famous drinker was FDR who enjoyed his with a cigarette on a long cigarette holder. The book points to the Martini’s biggest enemy, Jimmy Carter, who criticized the deductibility of executive lunches but not the bologna sandwich the worker ate, thus ending the three Martini lunch. By introducing us to a diverse crowd of politicals from both sides of the spectrum we imagine James Carville ripping into a Republican guest on Hardball and then flopping at a DC bar and having a Martini with said Republican and the pair slapping each other on the back.
I mention everything retro eventually coming back. Here in Saint Paul, home of F. Scott and a bastion for gangsters of the ‘20s, we’ve experienced a resurgence in rolling ‘20s lore. We have speakeasy style bars popping up around the cities and we have a hidden gem of a ‘20s era restaurant, complete with chessboard floors, grand piano, and palm trees. (The Commodore near Selby-Dale) When we go to a speakeasy, there is at least one party dressed in pinstripes with flappers on their arms. God bless the hipsters for keeping it real!
And if that’s all we’ve given the world then we’ve done our part this coffee table book argues. The Martini is a must have for any American living room that has a minibar atop the Victrola.
We’re taken back to a time in America when drinking a Martini meant that you either had arrived or were well on your way. It contains a wonderful quote from Christopher Buckley’s book Thank You for Smoking which presents this ideal with a splash of wit and a pony of cynicism:
“You could drink hard liquor in the middle of a school day without people assuming you were an alcoholic underachiever. Strange how in America in the 1950s, at the height of its industrial and imperial power, men drank double-martinis for lunch. Now, in its decline, they drank fizzy water. Somewhere something had gone terribly wrong.”
Everything old is new again and the Martini makes a comeback every few decades. It had a resurgence in the ‘80s, only with vodka. (The book touches on James Bond but doesn’t make the mistake of immortalizing him in Martini lore since he didn’t take his with gin.)
Many movie characters drank Martinis long before 007 unsheathed his PPK. WC Fields was notorious off the set, Bette Davis in All About Eve, The Thin Man, and Charles Butterworth who may have been the first to say “You ought to get out of those wet clothes and into a dry martini,” although others have been credited with saying it first.
The book yearns for a time when the Martini represented America and we didn’t take everything so seriously and we were united in the America spirit, both left and right. It’s a book with art, retro advertisements, New Yorker comics (yes those high-brow ones), quips on the Martini, and everyone from politics, literature, to Hollywood who has ever hoisted a see-through.
It’s not a recipe book, it only contains one recipe which of course is the standard of gin and vermouth. The author would never dream of speckling recipe asides for cosmopolitans and appletinis, which no Martini snob would ever imbibe on.
A coffee table book is the perfect venue for this subject. A 300 page rambling on every aspect would kill the allure, and if you’re drinking a Martini while reading it, you’ll probably just get through a few pages anyways so the more pictures, the better.
I particularly enjoyed the chapter on politics. The most famous drinker was FDR who enjoyed his with a cigarette on a long cigarette holder. The book points to the Martini’s biggest enemy, Jimmy Carter, who criticized the deductibility of executive lunches but not the bologna sandwich the worker ate, thus ending the three Martini lunch. By introducing us to a diverse crowd of politicals from both sides of the spectrum we imagine James Carville ripping into a Republican guest on Hardball and then flopping at a DC bar and having a Martini with said Republican and the pair slapping each other on the back.
I mention everything retro eventually coming back. Here in Saint Paul, home of F. Scott and a bastion for gangsters of the ‘20s, we’ve experienced a resurgence in rolling ‘20s lore. We have speakeasy style bars popping up around the cities and we have a hidden gem of a ‘20s era restaurant, complete with chessboard floors, grand piano, and palm trees. (The Commodore near Selby-Dale) When we go to a speakeasy, there is at least one party dressed in pinstripes with flappers on their arms. God bless the hipsters for keeping it real!
March 16, 2023
would be just three stars on similar grounds as those in my review of that frasier book
and yet, the subject matter need not pose the same dilemma as the frasier book's does....hm....
and yet, the subject matter need not pose the same dilemma as the frasier book's does....hm....
October 7, 2024
Enjoyable facts about the Martini cocktail. Loved the history, loved the artwork.
August 2, 2025
A decent read with good visuals.
November 25, 2014
A coffee table book, defined as one where the picture to text ratio is 1:1 or greater. That doesn't diminish the collection of text and images that Barnaby Conrad has put together in this slim volume, but as an exhaustive work on the mixture of gin and vermouth garnished with an olive this is not. Conrad does manage to bring together some things that I hadn't seen or read before in my cocktail explorations, including a very dry (heh heh) bit of humor from Christopher Buckley on a presidential debate between George "Pappy" Bush and Bill Clinton called "The Three Martini Debate," derived from a Tom Brokaw quote in The New York Times that serving the two a martini and having an exchange at his house would be a good alternative format. None of the pictures made my list of favorites, although the old advertisements and movie stills were interesting, and the cartoons, mainly from The New Yorker, were fun. Only two poems, one of which I was already intimately familiar with (the Dorothy Parker), but the other was one which I will endeavor to memorize, Ogden Nash's "A Drink with Something In It."
The single thing that I learned about the cocktail itself from the book was that the original recipe called for orange bitters in a 2:1 gin and vermouth combination. Since I actually have a bottle or orange bitters after having searched for a year for one, I can give this a try.
The single thing that I learned about the cocktail itself from the book was that the original recipe called for orange bitters in a 2:1 gin and vermouth combination. Since I actually have a bottle or orange bitters after having searched for a year for one, I can give this a try.
February 5, 2020
The guy and his many noteworthy contributors achieve the perfect tone throughout this discourse, both hyperbolic and whimsical (and you would hardly expect anybody named Barnaby Conrad III to be writing about King Cobra). The only slightly dubious note was lent by the frequent artworks emanating from a contemporaneous Modernism exhibition (to the extent that it began to seem a bit as though I were glancing through a catalog for that show), but I was willing to overlook all of that in the services of the Great Drink. :)
March 15, 2008
A must read for martini connoisseurs everywhere. This wonderful book presents the history and--more importantly--the philosophy of the martini in a fashion to reassure martini enthusiasts everywhere that ours is a noble pursuit. To create the perfect martini.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews