What People Are SayingAbout Good Spirits:
“With the release of Good Spirits, there’s nothing left to do but drink.Rathbun has left no spirit unturned. It’s a great companion in the search for a truly well-made cocktail.”
“This is not just a drink recipe book. A.J. has managed to combine his extensive bar know-how with wonderfully entertaining prose. After years of hanging out on both sides of the bar, A.J. has created a great bar book—perfect for pros and amateurs alike. I have been bartending for 15 years and I was amazed at the things I learned from this book.”
“For all who have dinner parties, Good Spirits is the must-have book for setting up a home bar and delving into the art of mixology.”
“My praise! In an era when the term ‘martini’ is used so loosely, it is refreshing to see that imaginative drinks are still being created, aptly titled, and cleverly selected and archived by Rathbun. Good Spirits provides an excellent companion to The Bartender’s Bible and Mr. Boston.”
“Even with my 25-plus years of food and beverage experience, I found this book hard to put down, a definite page-turner…This book screams out to be read from cover to cover and not just for the drink recipes…A.J. Rathbun’s humorously informative approach to the subject is truly an enjoyable and pleasurable experience. The home mixologist will want to refer back to Good Spirits again and again. Like a well-made cocktail, this book appeals to the senses, quenches the soul, and finishes with a smooth aftertaste that the reader will savor long after the first word is read.”
“Finally, the cocktail guide enters the 21st century.”
“Rathbun once again proves that drinking can be both fun and educational. Fascinating tidbits of bar lore and cocktail trivia make this book stand out from the rest.”
“With A.J. Rathbun’s Good Spirits, there’s no excuse for any bartender—at home or in a bar—not to take pride in whipping up everything from the perfect Martini to a true Venetian Bellini.”
“While Mr. Rathbun and I might differ on a few minor points of cocktail theology, as gentlemen will, I would much rather debate with someone who can write a book this witty, entertaining, and informative than stand in full agreement with someone else.”
About Party Drinks:
"Party Drinks! entertains you while teaching you how to entertain with a minimum of hassle. Rathbun’s style and wit make this not only a helpful book, but a fun read, too."
"If this fun, breezy book doesn’t get your party started, you should consider investing in a new set of friends."
"The next time you’re looking to have some fun, turn to Party Drinks! for inspiration. From the classic Martini to a sexy Singapore Sling, Party Drinks! has the recipe to jump start any party."
"It’s so nice to get back to the classic recipes for today’s cocktails. Too many cocktails have been brutalized by know-it-all bartenders who think waving a bottle of vermouth over a glass of gin makes a martini--not! The martini recipe in this book passed the father-in-law test--and my father-in-law is the most discriminating cocktail drinker I know. That says it all."
About Want:
A.J.Rathbun's remarkable poetry is some sort of perpetual motion machine, an unlikely machine with a heart as big and restless and needful as the universe. I wouldn't have believed a poetry this fast and hungry could move so assuredly, so attentively through its emotional traffic, and with such a clear head, but Want is just that poetry. This Want may be the mother and the father and the brother and the sister of us all.
In Seattle, says A.J. Rathbun, it's 85 cents for a busride home. The poems of Want may never get us there: they zigzag out to things and places and people all along the way, Tupac Shakur and Pablo and Ed, Westlake and Francis Ave, Kelly's on 2nd, the world's smallest Ferris Wheel. Or no, they radiate, with a want that is great--not the passive "to lack" but the strenuous verb "to desire," and the even more strenuous noun, heaped up desire.
With a Martian on his teeshirt and a bursting burrito on his mind, A.J. Rathbun lives and lives in the Kansas of uncertainty, moved by rain and garlic and persevering breasts, nudged by the bulldog of need, haunted by the lost sublimity of Jesus Lizard, hooked on "everything I won't believe until it's gone." Comedy turns elegiac, elegy turns comic, and Rathbun must ride on.
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