Shaken and Stirred: Through the Martini Glass and Other Drinking Adventures

William L. Hamilton loves a good gimlet. Rose's and lime. Straight up. Perfectly iced. Make the glass pretty too. "It ruined my reputation for thinking before I speak," he writes of that love. "I accept the trade-off." Like Lewis Carroll's Alice, when Hamilton sees it, he drinks it -- and tells the incredible tale.

In "Shaken and Stirred," his biweekly Sunday Styles column, now an original book of his drinking adventures, the intrepid New York Times reporter offers a gimlet-eye…