Jason Wilson, Boozehound

If you are going to go to school to study writing, don't do it at Drexel University. That is where Jason Wilson, the author of Boozehound: On the Trail of the Rare, the Obscure, and the Overrated in Spirits ostensibly teaches writing, and if the book is any indication, he is not very good at it. But I am getting ahead of myself. Boozehound is actually not a bad book. It's worth checking out by anyone who has any interest in distilled spirits and cocktails, primarily for the recipes. To his great credit, Wilson closes every chapter with a sizable selection of recipes, usually a mixture of classics and new-fangled concoctions, sometimes of his own creation. By the end of the book, all but the most obsessive amateur mixologist will be armed with a year's worth of experimental material.

As to the rest, Boozehound is largely true to food-writing form. Wilson travels around the Western hemisphere on his publisher's dime, visiting distilleries and bars, interviewing distillers and marketers and tasting a variety of spirits, some quite unusual, and marvels the whole time at his great fortune of being able to do this. Last I checked, this was called showing off.

Where Wilson really lost me, however, was the anecdotes of his supposedly misspent youth. Suburban New Jersey in the 1980s is an endless source of amusement to him, even all these years later. You would think that a college professor, ostensibly happily married with two kids, would have moved beyond this, and traveling around the world tasting exotic spirits would blow making out with a big-haired girl in a Camaro out of the water, but apparently not. Maybe it's just me. I never had the exhilarating experience of almost getting lucky with the most popular girl in the class on a high-school trip to Paris. But for my money, a well-mixed cocktail is best garnished with a twist of lemon peel, not a heap of teenage escapades.