Fly high with our sizzling August Book List! At once comic and tragic, loaded with dish and history is Craig Seligman’s Who Does That Bitch Think She Is? And quench your thirst with Maison Premiere’s Almanac which has created a richly illustrated compendium of cocktail lore.
Hiking America’s National Parks by Karen Berger
“How many countries have you been to? How many continents?” These questions, frequently bandied about among avid travelers, can belie an unspoken sense of competition among well-to-do jetsetters, a sort of world-domination one-upmanship. In constant pursuit of novel international itineraries, many travelers overlook boast-worthy destinations within our own borders. A quick armchair trip through the pages of Hiking America’s National Parks, a inspirational coffee table book by author Karen Berger and photographer Jonathan Irish ($60. Rizzoli. karenberger.com) might change that. The “hiking” in the title can be taken lightly —this is not a guide for hardcore overnight campers. The majority of the walking trails described here are short, sweet ambles, many less than a mile long, but the scenery they’ll take you through is jaw-dropping with waterfalls, sand dunes, glaciers, and gargantuan rock formations. Sure, Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon are here, but those are the London and Paris of national parks, just two of a surprising 63. At South Dakota’s Wind Cave National Park, you can walk underground, engulfed in the eerie breathing sounds caused by airflow patterns; or up above, through a vast prairie populated by pronghorn antelopes and black-footed ferrets. Congaree National Park, in South Carolina features a boardwalk winding through an often flooded forest, where groundwaters dramatically mirror the canopy of hardwood trees. There’s even a hike for travelers who remain hellbent on outdoing their far-flung friends: a stroll in the National Park of American Samoa, closer to Australia than the continental United States.
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Who Does That Bitch Think She Is? By Craig Seligman
Oh, honey, do I have a Drag Queen story hour for you. At once comic and tragic, loaded with dish and history, Craig Seligman’s Who Does That Bitch Think She Is? Doris Fish and the Rise of Drag ($29. Public Affairs. dorisfish.com/book) is a multifaceted gem, reflecting decades of social history through the biography of a little known queer pioneer. The drag persona of Philip Mills, born in Australia in 1952, Doris Fish was an outré staple of the gay scenes in both Sydney and San Francisco from the early 1970s until his death from AIDS in 1991. Beyond sharing vivid anecdotes gathered through years of interviews with Fish’s surviving peers and acquaintances, Seligman draws fascinating links to evolving attitudes among LGBTQ+ people as well as the general public. Among them, he reminds us that during Anita Bryant’s anti-gay Save Our Children campaign in the ‘70s, much of the community wanted to push drag queens out of the public eye, as if they were a dirty secret and source of shame. Seligman takes us back to a time when drag required a lot of bravery, as it still does today.
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TOMES FOR TIPPLERS
The Ice Book: Cool Cubes, Clear Spheres and Other Chill Cocktail Crafts By Camper English
Camper English, a queer and ever-querying polymath, runs the internet’s leading timesuck for brainiac boozehounds, Alcademics.com. His quirky blend of scientific inquiry and cocktail connoisseurship draws an audience that includes home mixologists, liquor industry professionals, and what English refers to as “an army of ice nerds.” Those freezing foot soldiers have followed their Commander in Chief over years of blog posts in which he pursued an obsessive mission to create crystal clear cloud-free ice cubes, sharing his experiments along the way. Despite years of often frustrated effort, English shunned the musical advice of “Frozen,” and wouldn’t let it go. And lo! He figured it out. The cold hard facts are now available to everyone in The Ice Book: Cool Cubes, Clear Spheres and Other Chill Cocktail Crafts ($19. Red Lightning Books. alcademics.com). English explains how careful observation and relentless tinkering led to his fairly fool-proof, home-kitchen friendly method of making pristine transparent ice. After you’ve mastered basic cubes, the book’s DIY fun continues with instructions on making clear ice shot glasses, punch bowls, spheres and sticks. How about black ice? Or cubes that change colors? Or ice with fruit and flowers floating inside? There’s a lot to drink in here.
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The Maison Premier by Joshua Boissy, Jordan MacKay, Krystof Zizka, William Elliott
Style guide? Mixology manual? World’s snazziest business card? The Maison Premiere Almanac ($40. Clarkson Potter. maisonpremiere.com) is a sexy, eclectic hardcover that does a remarkable job of transmuting a vibe into a volume. The vibe is that of its the titular institution, Maison Premiere, the Williamsburg, Brooklyn watering hole that, over its dozen years in business has fortified its success by skipping momentary trends and sticking to its own particular sense of timelessness. Around its marble horseshoe bar, exquisite tipples are crafted and dozens of oyster varieties shucked to serve patrons who the book flatteringly, but aptly, describes as “sensualists, aesthetes, and flaneurs.” There’s not so much an overarching high concept here as an extensive accrual of just-so details; which is why the curated miscellany of an almanac is the venue’s perfect literary parallel. Maison Premiere’s proprietors and book designer Ian Dingman have created a richly illustrated compendium of cocktail lore, interior design tips, wardrobe know-how, historical tidbits, trustworthy guidance on bivalves and houseplants, and even a background music playlist, all rakishly pulled together by writer Jordan Mackay’s bespoke prose. Its a great gift to give your host at a shindig or salon.
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AIRPLANE READ OF THE MONTH
Disorderly Men By Edward Cahill
“They joined a sad pageant of defeated men filing out onto Bethune Street, where snow gathered on the sidewalk and exhaust from the green police vans spiraled into the pitiless dark.” Story and style are perfectly aligned in Edward Cahill’s swiftly-paced period piece Disorderly Men ($28.95. Fordham University Press. edwardcahill.net), set behind the closet doors of mid-century Manhattan. Three very different men cross paths as the novel opens during a raid on a mobowned gay bar: Julian is a Columbia professor; Roger, a married-with-children Wall Street banker; and Danny, a Bronx kid who manages the produce department at his local grocery store. Typical of the time, their names are published in the newspaper, an act of public humiliation far more punishing than the fines they’re charged for “disorderly behavior,” and their lives are set spinning into unexpected new chapters. Cahill’s slightly soap operatic story unspools in the reader’s mind like a handsome old movie, melancholy, romantic and utterly absorbing.
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