My uncle's hooch habit was a veritable laugh riot until he fender-fucked a guardrail one night in his convertible. This snowballed into the ultimate buzz kill: a family intervention. Had he only had access to Frank Kelly Rich's The Modern Drunkard: A Handbook for Drinking in the 21st Century, unky-drunky might have stopped what Rich refers to as "a very personal Pearl Harbor" cold in its tracks.

A British expatriate who settled in Denver because he stumbled into the bar of his dreams there, Rich started Modern Drunkard magazine three years ago as a local zine. Now it's reached cult status, and this superb compendium—a veritable how-to guide to guilt-free sousing—probably will advance the enterprise to full-fledged phenomenon.

Rich's ethos can be summed up in one sentence that appears on page 91: "The difference between a philandering thug and a dashing rogue is a tuxedo." In this booziverse, drinking is not an addiction, but rather a noble national pastime championed by the great creative figureheads of our time; which gives Rich license to pen his handbook's most sublime chapter: "How to Ace an Intervention: Don't Just Survive the Inevitable Showdown—Win It!"

What makes this book especially impressive is that Rich actually leaves his best material—long, adulatory essays on great drunks such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Jackie Gleason, a hypothetical single elimination Golden Gloves tournament between history's 16 greatest celebrity boozehounds—on the cutting room floor. All the more to fill the pages of an equally entertaining sequel.