Camper English has a piece in the San Francisco Chronicle today on collectible cocktail books titled Bartenders shake and stir their way through cocktail history.English, who writes the booze blog Alcademics talks with Josey Packard, a bartender at Alembic in the Upper Haight who also studies recipe history and collector John Burton, owner and instructor of the Bartenders' School of Santa Rosa, about their interest in older cocktail booksHighlights:-The first known cocktail book is "How to Mix Drinks" by Jerry Thomas and was published 1862.-"Because of their proximity to sticky liquids, well-used cocktail books often don't hold up over time,...
Human Alphabet
Thanks to swissmiss for the lead
Changing Covers
In 1894, The Inland Printer, under the direction of Will Bradley, became the first American magazine to change its cover with every issue.Gallery of covers at Magazineart.orgThanks to Design Observer for the lead
Top Ten Books People Donated to The Book Thing
As much as the reading habits of the members of society speak volumes about what kind of society it is, what books one wants to dispose of can leave us a few clues as well.Here is the top ten list of books donated to The Book Thing of Baltimore according to its founder Russell Wattenberg. The list appeared in a 2002 article in the Chicago Tribune.The Book Thing is a bookstore where all the books are free for the taking, sort of a Goodwill without the commerce or a stationary, less interactive Book Crossing.The Top Ten are:1. Iacocca by Lee...
Radiohead: Band of the Year
I'm not sure I've ever heard one of their songs but in my world these guys are the band of the year. They just released their latest album without the help of a record company and all they asked was for their fans to pay what they want for it, no strings attached. Start at free and go from there. Here are the early results: How this applies to the book world? Clearly the publishing industry has not experienced the upheaval taking place in the music industry but it's coming. Remember we have been printing books alot longer than we...