OP: Stirred—Not Shaken

By now there have been a great number of books dedicated to singular drinks or spirits. And why shouldn’t there be several written in particular devotion to the most celebrated of cocktails? The martin is the pinnacle of craft behind the bar—a drink for which everyone has an opinion on its correct composition and manufacture—but it is also a metaphor for both the height of class and the depths of debauchery. 

British journalist John Doxat spent nearly two decades writing books on spirits, cocktails, and their history, all certainly written with a passion for and a personal investment in the subject matter. His 1976 monograph, Stirred - Not Shaken, is just as much a memoir of his long love affair with the martini as it is a history of the cocktail. Fact, fiction, and lore are here woven together in a witty and entertaining tapestry to be enjoyed within a dimly lit neighborhood bar, crisp martini in hand. It is one of the first books devoted entirely to one cocktail.