Cocktails Across America: A Postcard View of Cocktail Culture in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s

50 20th century cocktail recipes, illustrated with vintage postcards

Cocktail culture boomed in the United States after Prohibition, starting with the jazz-filled cocktail lounges and elegant supper clubs in New York City and, as rail and automotive travel advanced, flowing all the way to the postwar-era resorts and cabaret night spots of California and beyond. Barkeepers and mixologists across the country were developing new-fangled concoctions like the Red Snapper, the Santa Fe Cooler, and Cooper’s Ranch Punch.  A newly liberated America couldn’t get enough.