Cocktail: The Drinks Bible for the 21st Century

Excellent book on classic American cocktails. This was one of the first books to elevate cocktail making out of the depths of Kahlua Mudslides and Rum and Coke to a respect for the classic balanced cocktail. The book is basically an edited collection of the HotWired CocktailTime website from 1994-99. That site is offline but someone placed a full site mirror online (Feb 2013).

The book is often outrageously expensive online because it's out of print and relatively rare. It's a good book but it's not worth $50+! Sometimes you can find copies for under $30, depending on the whims of the pricing robots.