Here's the other author, Phil Stong. He wrote a book you might have heard of called State Fair. He was also quite a drinker. In my research for the intro, I turned up some really tragic letters from his wife about his drinking problem. A dark side to what is otherwise a very charming book.
Another remarkable thing about this book – it's one of the first books on cocktails to be written by a woman. Virginia Elliott was basically a hard-working New York freelancer who went on to publish a couple more cocktail books and cookbooks. Lived her whole life on the Upper East Side.
Did you know that Prohibition didn't just ban alcohol – it also banned the publishing or selling of books that explained how to make alcohol! When I wrote the introduction to this very charming reprint, the first thing I did was to track down a few banned pages that told how to make bathtub gin.
Shake 'em Up!: A Handbook of Polite Drinking | 
