HIRSCHFELD: THE SPEAKEASIES OF 1932
(NOT AVAILABLE OUTSIDE NORTH AMERICA)
“This is a wonderful book about a lost world. It is part social history, part artifact of urban archaeology, part -simple reporting on the long history of human folly. The apparent subject is the New York speakeasy, -captured in words and drawings by Al Hirschfeld in the final months of the preposterous American social experiment called Prohibition. The true subject is the book’s wider context: the invincible stupidity of those who embrace what George Orwell once called ‘the smelly little orthodoxies.’” —Pete Hamill
“A pithy, affectionate guide to speakeasies and their denizens, from Harlem to the Village . . . Deftly -captures the Manhattan demimonde with a gimlet eye and a Runyon ear . . . . This lavish reprint offers a -spirited look back.” —New York magazine
“A charming work of cultural history and a portrait of the artist as a hard-drinking young man.”
—Starred Review
Library Journal
“His comments are as swooping and witty as his lines.” —The New Yorker
“It is an amazing volume. A veritable Arabian Nights is unfolded here. The fashionable as well as the humble haunts are minutely described. It is the last word in daring and deviltry. From the Bowery to the roaring forties we are taken for a whirl and we meet every type that exists in our hectic town. Women in Paquin gowns are seated at the French bars, Negroes are seen hammering the piano keys, and one can all but hear the drinks being poured to the accompaniment of the exotic music. Mr. Hirschfeld’s -volume will someday be an historical document.” —Charles Hanson Towne
The New York American, 1932
“Mr. Hirschfeld takes your breath away. . . . He takes his 36 hot spots and puts them between two covers of a book to be handed down to posterity as a curio from a curious age in which America passed a law against the Demon Rum, with the odd result that -teetotalers took to mixing their own gin in the kitchen rather than to submit to law and order.”
—The Brooklyn Eagle, October 16, 1932
When Manhattan joints were hung out to dry, the Booze-oizie sniveled, then pirouetted on their stools to find reasonably palatable Speakeasy facsimiles. Each Prohibition hangout had its own flavor, decorum, decor, and formula for ducking the law. Each found its own alcoholic substratum, its own inimitable characters, behind, at and under the bar.
Al Hirschfeld nails these dipsomaniacal outposts with his pen and brush in the manner of a dour Irish bartender sizing up a troublesome souse. Provided as well is the recipe for each speakeasy's claim to fame. The resulting concoction is the perfect antidote to the Cappuccino Grande Malaise, a book that will make everyone yearn for a Manhattan, old-fashioned and straight up.
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