Review
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"Fascinating ... the finished product goes down nice
and smooth, providing great in into the vodka industry in
its current state."
—Publishers Weekly
“Make mine a double! I’ll be reading Vodka more than once, and I
don’t understand how ‘Colorless, Odorless, Flavorless’ got into
the subtitle of this vivid, pungent, and savory book.”
—P. J. O’Rourke
“Fantastic. Victorino Matus has written one of the most
interesting books of the year. Vodka is a great story, and he
tells it perfectly. I got so absorbed, I missed cocktail hour.
Buy three copies.”
—Tucker Carlson
“An excellent book on a spirit remarkable for being unremarkable,
Vodka is a brilliant social history, an incisive study of
business and marketing, and a lot of fun to read.”
—Michael Ruhlman, New York Times–bestselling and James Beard– and
IACP Award–winning author of The Soul of a Chef, The French
Laundry Cookbook (with Thomas Keller), Charcuterie, and Ruhlman's
Twenty.
“Vodka made me laugh, learn, think, and savor the journey. On
every page, I thought: I want one now. Put this great book on its
own shelf with a tall bottle of vodka next to it. You’ll love
it.”
—Larry Miller, actor, comedian, and host of This Week with Larry
Miller
“Matus’s book is anything but bland. He guides us through the
history of how this colorless drink became the most popular
tipple in America by mixing a cocktail of anthropological in
and reportorial legwork, dashed with a perfect measure of
tongue-in-cheek wit.”
—Max Watman, author of Harvest and Chasing the White Dog
“With a business writer’s acumen, Victorino Matus carefully
brings the cloudy world of the international vodka industry into
focus. Both millionaire distillers and mom-and-pop operations
invite him inside their world, where he explores super premiums,
celebrity endorsements, the flavor craze, and the seamier side of
the industry. Part history lesson and part marketing examination,
Vodka will make you think twice the next time you look at a
bottle of it.”
—Kevin C. Fitzpatrick, author of Under the Table
“Vodka comes alive in the hands of Victorino Matus, who blends
historical background with pop culture and weaves together a cast
of characters ranging from the czars of Russia and James Bond to
Dan Aykroyd and P. Diddy. This book will please casual readers
and cocktail geeks alike. Reading Vodka might not be as
satisfying as drinking it—but it comes close!”
—Mark Spivak, author of Iconic Spirits and Moonshine Nation
“Matus casts his gimlet eye over a range of brands, from tiny
craft distillers to industry giants, and recounts how they've
found their place in the crowded vodka ecosystem…And by the end,
it's hard to disagree—not just in the sales figures but also in
its conquests. Haters will still say there's no craft in vodka,
that it's an industrial product. But Mr. Matus convinced me
there's true craft here…Vodka didn't conquer America; America
conquered vodka.” – The Wall Street Journal
“The whole book is a tour de rires of the American vodka
industry. Mr. Matus, with a feature reporter’s eye and a nice,
light touch, shows us Vodka USA in all its glory...Literary
merits aside, this is a beautiful book. It smells good, too…One
can only hope more publishers follow this example.” – The
Washington Times
“Vodka is one part intriguing history lesson, one part reporting,
and one part percipient marketing study. Suffusing his book with
an easy charm and engaging wit, Matus draws the reader in as he
charts vodka’s origins and its rise to become America’s
top-selling spirit.” --The Federalist
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About the Author
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Victorino Matus is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard. He has
written for the New York Post, Salon.com, The Wall Street
Journal, Washington Post, and Washingtonian magazine and provided
commentary on CNN, NPR, C-SPAN, The Laura Ingraham Show, and the
BBC. For a Washington Post piece on the FDA’s menu label mandate,
he consumed 3,000 calories in a single sitting to prove a point,
and his essays have covered the greatest culinary insult to
Italian-Americans (The Olive Garden) and the foie gras wars. He
lives in Arlington, Virginia, with his wife, Kate, and their two
children.
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