One part celebration, one part history, two parts manifesto, Bernard DeVoto’s The Hour is a comic and unequivocal treatise on how and why we drink—properly. The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award–winning author turns his shrewd wit on the spirits and attitudes that cause his stomach to turn and his eyes to roll (Warning: this book is NOT for rum drinkers). DeVoto instructs his readers on how to drink like gentlemen and sheds new light on the simple joys of the cocktail hour.

Daniel Handler’s introduction to this reprint of the 1950s classic provides a humorous framework for the modern reader.

Bernard DeVoto was an author, literary critic, and historian. In 1948, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Across the Wide Missouri, and in 1953 he won the National Book Award for The Course of Empire. From 1935 onward he wrote a regular column, The Easy Chair, for Harper's Magazine. He served as curator for the papers of Mark Twain, and gained popularity for his abridged version of the journals of Lewis and Clark. He was a champion of public lands and the conservation of natural resources, as well as an adamant defender of civil liberties.