LET’S BRING BACK
A cultural encyclopedia of nostalgia, Let’s Bring Back celebrates forgotten-yet-crucial objects, curiosities, pastimes, fashions, words, landmarks, and personalities from bygone eras.
“Whimsical … comical … delightful. Blume’s book is about more than just populating your life with antique trinkets; it’s about curating your own charming lifestyle while celebrating the Wildean ideals of life as art.”
- The New Yorker
Let’s Bring Back transports its readers from the golden age of Hollywood to the bacchanals of ancient Rome to the elaborately-coiffed and martini-filled New York City of the 1960s. This is a world of monocles and parasols; luxurious train travel and gilded airline cabins; decadent feasts, pet cheetahs, and zeppelins.
Released in 2010, Let’s Bring Back captured imaginations across the country and around the world. At a time when heritage sensibilities were still a novelty, the book foreshadowed the wave of nostalgia that would soon drive trends in many industries, from fashion to food to publishing. Two other Let’s Bring Back volumes followed – The Lost Language Edition and The Cocktail Edition.
Scores of media outlets have celebrated Let’s Bring Back, from Good Morning America (“Beautiful … delightful … a lovely read.” – Robin Roberts) to National Public Radio to O, The Oprah Magazine (“Elegant … whimsical.”). And to this day, the top-selling original volume remains, as the Wall Street Journal put it, a “humorous ode to preservation and the art of rediscovery.”
LET’S BRING BACK: THE LOST LANGUAGE EDITION
“A fine selection of the past’s best tongue-ticklers, many of which communicate more than any modern phrasing.”
- CityLab
In the past, expressions like horsefeathers (nonsense), blinkers (see also: barnacles, peepers, cheaters, and spectacles), and coxy-loxy (good-naturedly drunk) were all the go around town, but they have since largely disappeared from the English lexicon in favor more pedestrian modern expressions.
Too often, when struggling to find just the right turn-of-phrase or witty barb, we forget that history has already provided us with a plethora of rich, revival worthy words. Give your vocabulary a jolt and prove that you’re no totty-headed dandiprat by bringing back words like gadabout (a traipsing gossip), gamcases (stockings) and scandal broth (tea).
The delightful words, phrases, idioms, insults, and praises in this book’s pages will make you the cat’s meow among your friends, relations and acquaintances.
Let’s Bring Back: The Lost Language Edition also contains satchels of guest contributions from some of today’s most celebrated novelists, essayists, journalists, and philosophers, including Christopher Buckley, Cokie Roberts, Jim Shepard, and many other wordsmiths and literary types.
LET’S BRING BACK: THE COCKTAIL EDITION
“Let's Bring Back: The Cocktail Edition’ is such good reading — it’s a mix of cocktail lore, recipes, anecdotes, and quotations — that I think even a teetotaler would enjoy it.”
- The Paris Review Daily
Introducing Let’s Bring Back: The Cocktail Edition, a compendium of long-forgotten libations due for a revival. Culled from ancient times through the 1960s, these vintage cocktails are by turns fizzy and flat, sweet and sour, lethal and prim. Some of them are absurd, others sentimental, and yet others outright scandalous. They include:
* Angel’s Tit (Guaranteed to shock goody-goodies)
* Du Barry (To get your mistress into the mood)
* Green-Eyed Monster (To serve to frenemies)
* Monkey Gland (An unlikely fountain of youth)
* Runt’s Ambition (Serve this to men with Napoleon Complex)
This illustrated tome divulges colorful cocktail history and barroom wisdom alongside one hundred and forty-four recipes that will delight cocktail aficionados for years to come. “Blume’s history of cocktails and bars will have you laughing out loud as you mix,” said Good Housekeeping.
A 2012 holiday pick for The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and The Daily Beast, Let’s Bring Back: The Cocktail Edition still makes a highly original addition to any library. After all, as FineCooking.com put it, “most books on vintage cocktails stick to the tried-and-true classics, but [this] one fights for the underdog.”