Charles H. Baker
Author and cocktail aficionado

We really wish we had known this great writer of classic cocktails. As a noted food and drink editor during the '30s, '40s, and '50s, Mr. Baker had the dream job of traveling the world to report on cocktails for a book series called The Gentleman's Companions.

In 1951, The Chicago Tribune declared: "For the greatest adventure in eating and drinking since the invention of fire and ice, get these Gentleman's Companions and forget about Russia, taxes, and your in-laws." We still think his books work well for forgetting taxes.

Mr. Baker penned several other books, including Esquire's Culinary Companion and Blood of a Lamb. The latter work seems to have been his only foray into fiction. A story of the Florida cracker country and an unctuous minister whose lascivious ways result in driving an old woman and her two pretty daughters from the region, the book seems to have been panned by reviewers of the day: "Blood of the Lamb is not much of a novel, but it is long on local color, loud piety, snuff, 'stump liquor,' and local talk." Humph - they were just jealous of his day job.