(Note: My book Drinks: A User’s Guide  was published by Tarcher Perigee in September 2016 and I was the recurring drinks expert on CTV’s The Social for a few years. I’m largely retired from drinks writing now. This is an old info page about my book.)

Buy Drinks: A User’s Guide from Amazon Canada, Amazon USA,Indigo Chapters, Barnes and Noble, McNally Robinson, Amazon UK

Back in the 1930s, a bartender named Frank Meier at the Ritz Hotel in Paris wrote: “To know how to drink is as essential as to know how to swim.”

That’s especially true today. There’s a glorious revolution afoot in the world of booze. Drinks have become deliciously diverse like never before. Are you ready to raise your glass? Armed with Drinks: A User’s Guide, learn to serve and order wine, beer, cocktail and spirits like a boss. Everyone can learn how to drink well every day. It’s not just for wine geeks and, like, James Bond.

Lessons include:

• stocking your home bar, and how to actually use those bar tools
• ordering wine at a restaurant without dying a little inside
• choosing the right beer for an occasion, from New Year’s Eve to assembling patio furniture
• how to make an impromptu cocktail using convenience store ingredients
• how to open a bottle of sparkling wine without putting someone’s eye out
• developing a taste for scotch — and never letting anyone tell you a woman shouldn’t

Here’s what people are saying about Drinks: A User’s Guide.

“A smart, funny, and even useful manual.”
— Booklist

“While other books offer in-depth guidance on wine or beer or cocktails, [Drinks] provides blunt yet witty comprehensive guide to all … highly recommended.”
— Library Journal

“A thoroughly useful and enjoyable compendium of drinking lore and knowledge, with an ample dose of much-needed cynicism, too often lacking in books of this type.”
—Philip Greene, co-founder of The Museum of the American Cocktail and author of To Have and Have Another: A Hemingway Cocktail Companion

“There is, as yet, no perfect user’s guide for life. But for the many moments in our lifetimes when a decent drink is required—whether it’s a crisp pilsner on a summer afternoon, a glass of champagne on a special day, or a dry martini when the clock strikes five—Adam McDowell’s Drinks: A User’s Guide has you covered.”
—Paul Clarke, executive editor of Imbibe magazine, and author of The Cocktail Chronicles

“If you don’t know how to drink, this book is for you. If you do know how to drink, this book is also for you, since everyone is sure to be charmed by Adam McDowell’s sage and friendly advice about what to order, in any setting. After years of tweaking his philosophy of drink, McDowell has finally shared his accumulated knowledge in this invaluable resource. Not since Kingsley Amis has reading about drinking been this much fun.” 
—Christine Sismondo, author of America Walks Into a Bar

Those links again, for your convenience: Amazon Canada, Amazon USA,Indigo Chapters, Barnes and Noble, McNally Robinson, Amazon UK