Yesterday in the NY Times dining section there was an article about Greg Boehm who is reprinting a number of vintage cocktail manuals. I picked up a few of these books at Tales of the Cocktail and they are really remarkable. As facsimiles, they are virtually identical to the originals. This is much cooler than most reprints that put a modern cover on a classic work. At Tales I picked up The Mixicologist (1895) and Barflies and Cocktails (1927). These were offered as premiums with our Tales registration. What I'm more excited about however is Boehm's reprints of Jerry Thomas's 1862 Bartender's Guide: A Bon Vivant's Companion, which is one of the first books written on the subject, and was the inspiration for David Wondrich's award-winning Imbibe!; and Harry Johnson's Bartender's Manual (1900) which Robert Hess describes in the introduction as being "perhaps as important as the Rosetta stone." That may be a bit of a stretch but having these rare manuscripts available again will no doubt provide important insight into the ancient history of the trade for those of us who are the modern practitioners of it. The books are available at cocktailkingdom and amazon, though it looks like the Thomas reprint will not be out for a couple more months.