The Obituary Cocktail by Sue Strachan
Louisiana State University Press, July 2025
Sue Strachan’s The Obituary Cocktail is a spirited dive into New Orleans’s bohemian past, chronicling how this cocktail — made with gin, vermouth, and absinthe — became central to mid-twentieth-century café society before fading temporarily into obscurity. Like a good obituary, this book shares stories about the drink, beginning with its 1940s origins at Café Lafitte, the oldest continuously operating gay bar in the U.S. and the stomping ground for the city’s café society, which included Tennessee Williams, Ella Brennan, and a rich crop of prominent New Orleans visitors. Strachan explores the history of the cocktail’s ingredients, shares recipes for home mixologists, and resurrects the stories of other morbidly monikered drinks.
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