A must-read for aspiring connoisseurs, and a thorough refresher for seasoned whisky lovers.”—Whiskey Advocate Winner of the Gourmand Award in the Drink Education category (US). The definitive book on understanding and appreciating the exploding world of whiskey. Renowned whiskey educator Robin Robinson demystifies the “water of life” in a definitive, heavily illustrated tome designed to take readers on a global tour of the ever-expanding world of whiskey. Across ten robust “classes,” Robinson explains whiskey history, how it defined the way whiskey is made in different countries and regions, the myriad styles, how aging and finishing works, and the basics of “nosing” and tasting whiskey. In chapters dedicated to American whiskey (including bourbon, Tennessee whiskey, and rye), American Craft whiskey, Scotch, Irish, Canadian, Japanese, and world whiskies, Robinson presents the best offerings from new and historic producers, how to choose among them, and how to build a collection of your own. Each “class” is a journey into a country’s whiskies and makers, including recommended bottles and styles, as well as insider information on how distilleries make their unique offerings. Each chapter includes themed tastings organized by bargain, value, special occasion, and splurge price categories. This thoroughly up-to-date and wide-ranging guide also offers helpful recommendations on how to lead your own tasting, a glossary of terms, food pairings, and tips on everything from glassware to whiskey festivals and how to read a label.

The perfect accompaniment to your whiskey tasting journey The best - and most enjoyable - way to find out about whiskies is by drinking them. This truly hands-on handbook takes you on a tasting journey to discover your own personal whiskey style, and helps you to expand your horizons so you can find a world of new whiskies to enjoy. Through a series of guided at-home tastings, you'll get familiar with the full spectrum of whiskey aromas and flavours on offer - from the smokey tang of Islay peat to the aromatic scent of Japanese oak. Find out how to engage all your senses to navigate the range of malts, grains and blended whiskies and get to grips with different whiskey styles. Take a tasting tour of the world's finest makers, including iconic Scottish distilleries and the small-scale artisan producers all over the globe. And as you become more whisky-confident, you can break out of your whisky comfort zone. Do you love the honeyed sweetness of a Kentucky Bourbon? If so, why not try a smooth malt that's been aged in ex-Bourbon barrels? Or a creamy, oat-infused Irish craft whiskey? Guides to whiskey prices and ages will help you to make smart buys. Discover how to pour, store and serve whiskies and match them with foods. Learn to mix cocktails, from a classic whiskey sour to your own signature creation. With 20 step-by-step whiskey tastings, clear infographics and jargon-busting advice - taste your way to whiskey wisdom.

Go beyond the glass and discover the secrets behind your favorite style of whiskey. Over the past three decades, Lew Bryson has been one of the most influential voices in whiskey—a longtime editor of Whisky Advocate and author of the definitive guide Tasting Whiskey. In this book, Lew shares everything he's learned on his journey through the worlds of bourbon, Scotch, rye, Japanese whiskey, and more (yes, there are tasty Canadian and Irish whiskeys as well!). In this book, you'll find it all: An overview of the different types of whiskeys, including the rules and identities of each. He also includes information on craft whiskeys, which tend to be more creative and freewheeling than the styles made by traditional producers. Exploration of the key whiskey ingredients, with a close look at the flavor contributions of malt, peat, corn, rye, wheat—even water matters. Distillation for non-distillers and the beauty of barrels: Whiskey is both an art and a science, and what's in the glass is affected by things like pot stills vs. column stills, barrel char, and of course, time. Numerous interviews with master distillers, still makers, and other artisans at the top of their field. Tasting notes throughout so you can identify the whiskeys you might want to try next. Every chapter contains a variety of unique, often behind-the-scenes photography. And with whiskey as the subject, this is a class where you'll want to do the homework!

Cowboys Full traces the story of poker from its roots in China, until Americans took what was a French parlour game and turned it into a national craze by the time of the American Civil War. Poker has been inextricably linked with American history ever since. It has been played by numerous presidents (Richard Nixon financed his first campaign office through his poker winnings) and has been used as a political tool to explain policy, for networking and to negotiate treaties. Poker echoes how we conduct wars and do business: cheating and bluffing, leveraging uncertainty, managing risk and reward. In the past poker was thought to be a cheater's game but it has since become a mostly honest contest of cunning, mathematics and luck. It is the world's, and cyberspace's, most popular card game and has had an immense impact on popular culture - McManus explores its portrayal in novels, movies and plays. Combining colourful history with the author's own personal experience of the professional tour Cowboys Full introduces the reader to all the major forms of poker, the game's most notorious players and demonstrates how poker has informed military, diplomatic and business life for centuries.

Written by one of the whiskey world's leading experts.

This meticulously edited collection contains complete works by writer Bram Stoker, the pioneer in vampire fiction and the author of the novel Dracula. The edition includes all other supernatural horrors and gothic novels, as well as occult and supernatural short stories. Contents: Novels: Dracula The Snake's Pass The Watter's Mou' The Mystery of the Sea The Jewel of Seven Stars The Man (The Gates of Life) The Lady of the Shroud The Lair of the White Worm (The Garden of Evil) The Primrose Path The Shoulder of Shasta Lady Athlyne Miss Betty Short Stories: Under the Sunset The Rose Prince The Invisible Giant The Shadow Builder How 7 Went Mad Lies and Lilies The Castle of the King The Wondrous Child Snowbound: The Record of a Theatrical Touring Party The Occasion A Lesson in Pets Coggins's Property The Slim Syrens A New Departure in Art Mick the Devil In Fear of Death At Last Chin Music A Deputy Waiter Work'us A Corner in Dwarfs A Criminal Star A Star Trap A Moon-Light Effect Dracula's Guest & Other Weird Stories Dracula's Guest The Judge's House The Squaw The Secret of the Growing Gold A Gipsy Prophecy The Coming of Abel Behenna The Burial of the Rats A Dream of Red Hands Crooken Sands Other Stories The Red Stockade The Dualists The Crystal Cup Buried Treasures The Chain of Destiny Our New House The Man from Shorrox' A Yellow Duster The 'Eroes of the Thames The Way of Peace Greater Love Lord Castleton Explains The Seer Midnight Tales Famous Imposters Bram Stoker (1847-1912) was an Irish author, best remembered as the author of the influential horror novel Dracula. Stoker spent several years researching European folklore and mythological stories of vampires. His Dracula became a part of popular culture and it established many conventions of subsequent vampire fantasy.

The speeches of Charles Sumner have many titles to endure in the memory of mankind. They contain the reasons on which the American people acted in taking the successive steps in the revolution which overthrew slavery, and made of a race of slaves, freemen, citizens, voters. They have a high place in literature. They are not only full of historical learning, set forth in an attractive way, but each of the more important of them was itself an historical event. They afford a picture of a noble public character. They are an example of the application of the loftiest morality to the conduct of the State. They are an arsenal of weapons ready for the friends of Freedom in all the great battles when she may be in peril hereafter. They will not be forgotten unless the world shall attain to such height of virtue that no stimulant to virtue shall be needed, or to a depth of baseness from which no stimulant can arouse it. Mr. Sumner held the office of Justice of the Peace, and that of Commissioner of the Circuit Court, to which he was appointed by his friend and teacher, Judge Story. He was a member of the convention held in 1853 to revise the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. With these exceptions, his only official service was as Senator in Congress from Massachusetts, from the 4th of March, 1851, when he was just past forty years of age, until his death, March 9, 1874. If his career could have been predicted in his earliest childhood, he could have had no better training for his great duties than that he in fact received. He was one of the best scholars in the public Latin School in Boston. He received the Franklin medal from the hands of Daniel Webster, who told him that "the state had a pledge of him." His school life was followed by four years in Harvard College, and a course at the Harvard Law School, where he was the favorite pupil of Judge Story. He was an eager student of the Greek and Roman classics. But his special delight was in history and international law. After his admission to the bar he was reporter of the decisions of his beloved master, and edited twenty volumes of the equity reports of Vesey, Jr., which he enriched with copious and learned notes. A little later, when he was twenty-six years old, he spent a month in Washington, tarrying a short time in New York on his way. In that brief period he made life-long friendships with some famous men, including Chancellor Kent, Judge Marshall, and Francis Lieber. He had a rare gift for making friendships with men, especially with great men, and with women. With him in those days an acquaintance with any person worth knowing soon ripened into an indissoluble friendship. A few years later he spent a little more than two years in Europe, coming home when he was just past twenty-nine years old. That time was spent in attending courts, lectures of eminent professors, and in society. No house which he desired to enter seems to have been closed to him. Statesmen, judges, scholars, beautiful women, leaders of fashionable society, welcomed to the closest intimacy this young American of humble birth, with no passport other than his own character and attainment. It is hardly too much to say that the youth of twenty-nine had a larger and more brilliant circle of friendship than any other man on either continent. The list of his friends and correspondents would fill many pages. He says in a letter to Judge Story, what would seem like boasting in other men, but with him was modest and far within the truth:— "I have a thousand things to say to you about the law, circuit life, and the English judges. I have seen more of all than probably ever fell to the lot of a foreigner. I have had the friendship and confidence of judges, and of the leaders of the bar. Not a day passes without my being five or six hours in company with men of this stamp. My tour is no vulgar holiday affair, merely to spend money and to get the fashions. It is to see men, institutions, and laws; and, if it would not seem vain in me, I would venture to say that I have not discredited my country. I have called the attention of the judges and the profession to the state of the law in our country, and have shown them, by my conversation (I will say this), that I understand their jurisprudence."

Jamett Penelope Sutherland hates her name but loves her new loft apartment especially after she meets her handsome next-door neighbor in nothing but a towel one fateful morning. Joseph Scarbrough is proficient in fixing clogged sinks and leaky roofs, but he’s not all that great at falling in love. Convinced he’s incapable, he tries to move on from a humiliating breakup with his childhood sweetheart and finds consolation in the company of the brunette who just moved in next door. As Jamie and Joseph refuse to jump into another relationship doomed to fail, fate seems determined to make their worlds collide on a regular basis. Is destiny being clumsy or is something bound to happen between the two unlikely neighbors?

Whether you are looking to find out more about the production techniques and history of your favorite distillery or want to discover a hidden gem that you've never tried before, this book tells and shows you everything you need to know, including comprehensive tasting notes of recommended whiskies, serving suggestions, and food and whiskey pairing. It is a book to enjoy at your leisure, but also acts as an ideal portable reference to take to a restaurant, whiskey shop, or on avisit to a distillery.

On an Alaskan island beset by climate change, a Native seeks to preserve history: “An enthralling, engaging, mind-bending, time-bending story collection.” —Garth Stein, New York Times–bestselling author of The Art of Racing in the Rain Tova Agard’s world is literally falling apart: she’s just been disowned by her father in a violent confrontation over her sexuality, and climate change is about to wreak havoc on the world around her. In the midst of catastrophe, Tova meets Smithsonian Institute ethnologist John Swanton on an Alaskan-ferry time machine, trapping Swanton on Tova’s small hometown of Wrangell Island. Tova convinces Swanton that the island’s contemporary stories are worth collecting despite their strangeness: in Tova's oral traditions, a woman becomes a bear, a man marries trees, a UFO hunts deer, and the dead go to Seattle. These forty-three linked tales in the story-cycle are not stories that the Smithsonian intended to collect, but by the time all the tales are told, their reconstruction of history will make a greater impact on the world around them then either Tova or Swanton could have ever imagined. “Cleverly framed, these stories capture a rich island community that is steeped in oral traditions . . . a collection that rewards rereading and rumination.” ―Foreword Reviews