Brad Thomas Parsons moved from Seattle to New York City a few years back, but not before hatching the idea to write his book Bitters: A Spirited History of a Classic Cure-all.

In fact, Parsons—a former senior editor at Amazon—says it’s an article he wrote for this very magazine that sent him down the bitter path towards his book, due out November 1 on Ten Speed Press. (Weirdly, it was while editing that article that I first became interested in Seattle bar culture, which led to this here blog. He got a book, I got a blog. Conclude what you will.)

Anyway, proofs of the book have circulated around Seattle, and today an early review popped up on the Tom Douglas Restaurants blog, written by TDR’s Shelley Lance.

Lance confesses her Brad bias: "I’ve known Brad for years, from the days he lived in Seattle (he has since relocated to Brooklyn)…I knew he was smart, intense, and enthusiastic about everything food and drink…." But she makes the very apt point that Bitters is at once a history and a recipe book—making it doubly useful. Anyone familiar with David Wondrich’s celebrated works will appreciate the enthusiasm that cocktail history can engender in cocktail-making, and vice versa.

Parsons’s recipes include bitters made with cherries and hazelnuts, key lime, and coffee and pecan, as well as cocktails with funny names like the Mrs. Kitzel and the Pith Helmet.

And you may recognize one of the containers on the cover: To the far left is a bottle of Scrappy’s, crafted here in Seattle by Miles Thomas.