“How to Drink Like a Mobster” by Albert W. A. Schmid: A Review–Quick, drink the evidence!

Hardcover, 128 pages
Published September 1st 2018 by Red Lightning Books
ISBN: 1684350492 (ISBN13: 9781684350490)
Edition Language: English

Goodreads blurb:

From John Dillinger’s Gin Fizz to Al Capone’s Templeton Rye, mobsters loved their liquor―as well as the millions that bootlegging and speakeasies made them during the Prohibition. In a time when any giggle juice could land you in the hoosegow, mobsters had their own ways of making sure the gin mill never ran dry and the drinks kept flowing. And big screen blockbusters like The Godfather, GoodFellas, and Scarface and small screen hits like The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire ensure that our obsession with mobsters won’t run dry, either.
Mixology expert Albert W. A. Schmid shows how you can recreate the allure of the gangster bar life with step-by-step instructions on how to set up the best Prohibition-style bar and pour the drinks to match. Recipes include mob favorites like the Machete, the Paralyzer, Greyhound (Salty Dog), Say Hello to My Little Friend, and Angel Face, as well as classics like the Gimlet, Kamikaze, and Bee’s Knees. How to Drink Like a Mobster also includes profiles of the most notorious mobsters’ connections to the booze business, along with tips to stay under the radar in any speakeasy: always have at least one or more aliases ready, pay with cash, don’t draw attention to yourself, and in the case of a raid, drink the evidence as fast as you can!

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Clear-cut and quick, How to Drink Like a Mobster is glimpse into the often overly glamourized life of the “American Mobster”. With dozens of easy to follow recipes for cocktails and other “Prohibition Era” drinks, along with anecdotes about how each peculiar beverage got its name, or just a small factoid that goes along with it (Corpse Reviver anybody?).

Nonfiction isn’t generally my genre but by and large, this reads more like a cookbook/drink book than it does like a piece of serious history. A short overview of famous mobsters and a handy lexicon of “traditional” mafioso jargon and then pages of drinks of all kinds and the differences between them make this book a handy thing to keep around next time you entertain.

I’m definitely looking forward to attempting to be a bartender, or just something new to try next time I go out for drinks with a friend.

3.5 Stars, rounded up to a Goodreads 4.
I got an ARC copy from a Goodreads giveaway (thanks so much), and then insert usual disclaimer here.

A Review: “Hell’s Princess: The Mystery of Belle Gunness, Butcher of Men” by Harold Schechter

Kindle Edition, Kindle in Motion: 334 pages

Expected publication: April 1st 2018 by Little A

Goodreads Synopsis:

In the pantheon of serial killers, Belle Gunness stands alone. She was the rarest of female psychopaths, a woman who engaged in wholesale slaughter, partly out of greed but mostly for the sheer joy of it. Between 1902 and 1908, she lured a succession of unsuspecting victims to her Indiana “murder farm.” Some were hired hands. Others were well-to-do bachelors. All of them vanished without a trace. When their bodies were dug up, they hadn’t merely been poisoned, like victims of other female killers. They’d been butchered.
<I>Hell’s Princess</I> is a riveting account of one of the most sensational killing sprees in the annals of American crime: the shocking series of murders committed by the woman who came to be known as Lady Bluebeard. The only definitive book on this notorious case and the first to reveal previously unknown information about its subject, Harold Schechter’s gripping, suspenseful narrative has all the elements of a classic mystery—and all the gruesome twists of a nightmare.

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3.25 Stars

I’m not much for nonfiction, but when presented with the opportunity to purchase the Kindle version through my Amazon Prime account and the “Kindle First Reads” or whatever they’re calling the feature now, I thought this was the most interesting choice offered this month.

Perhaps due to the fact that I don’t read a lot of nonfiction, there was a certain dryness tone but I had some difficulty with, but once I got past that personal hurdle, I found myself very pleased with this book.

(And as an aside, I don’t particularly care for e-books, but reading this one as a Kindle in Motion edition is really the best and only way to go).

Prior to reading this book, I’d never heard of Belle Gunness, which in some ways I found strange given the average American’s fascination with serial killers.  And Belle Gunness as she would come to be known was that seemingly rarest of breeds: a female serial killer with an aptitude for blood and butchery.

Belle’s story has the all the hallmark features that fascinate the human mind about serial killers: butchery, mixed motivations that to this day remain elusive, the twisted outlook on life that’s deemed so necessary for a person to possess to deprive a human creature of life, and the ambivalence surrounding the final truths about what really happened on her farm and she herself that may slip farther and farther away into history’s smoke with each passing year.

Much as Whitechapel has Jack the Ripper, La Porte has Belle Gunness. Though her identity is known, their respective disappearing acts (or deaths) still remain a mystery lost to us.