When They Go Low, We Go Highball
Fifty Cocktails for Smashing the Patriarchy
When They Go Low, We Go Highball is a rousing cocktail recipe collection that evokes feminine power and potential.
The fifty cocktails and libations in Leslie Miller’s exuberant bar guide When They Go Low, We Go Highball are an act of protest against the US’s retrogressive sociopolitical climate.
With a foreword by bartender Shantelle Pace, the book details the history of discrimination against women in the “cocktail world.” California women, it notes, were prohibited from holding bartender jobs from 1947 to 1971, and the mere entrance of a woman into a drinking establishment once provoked strong disapproval. Created by bartenders as a more decorative beverage to allow women to drink in public, the Singapore Sling later became one of many cocktail alternatives to the usual barroom offerings of whiskey and beer.
Divided into action-oriented and rallying sections, the featured cocktails address past and present infringements upon women’s rights. The collection takes its title from Michelle Obama’s famed quote regarding political opposition: “When they go low, we go high.” But the book conveys a keener sense of outrage and pushback in its cocktail descriptions, shifting the elevated “high road” mentality to more contemplative plans of action inspired by enticing highballs.
The titular “When They Go Low, We Go Highball” is an elegant gin and tonic topped with intriguing garnishes. The laudable accomplishments of other contemporary women, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Toni Morrison, are also celebrated through cocktail creations: The “Coat of Many Colors” blends “beautifully layered” tequila and grenadine in a tribute to the multitalented and philanthropic Dolly Parton.
The book excels as it moves further back in history, with unique cocktails inspired by artist Frida Kahlo and mother-daughter authors Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley. “The Empress” is crafted in honor of Wu Zetian’s Tang Dynasty rise from concubine to imperial ruler. Reflecting upon the fight for women’s suffrage, the “Old-Fashioned: 19th Amendment Edition” updates the classic favorite with “butter-washed” bourbon and salty-cinnamon tastes. But in its inclusion of a more “complex” daiquiri, the book mentions writer Ernest Hemingway’s influence upon the enduring drink. Rather than giving him further credit, the book suggests that lovers of the Hemingway Daiquiri “rename” their beverage after “a woman” they “truly admire,” though it stops short of renaming this particular daiquiri after Martha Gellhorn, Hemingway’s third wife and an intrepid war correspondent.
Thematic cocktails, with names including “Mansplainin’” and “The Glass Ceiling,” are also included. A heady sangria adaptation called “Thyme’s Up” incorporates rosé wine, limoncello, fruit, herbs, and other ingredients while referencing the recent “Time’s Up” movement’s focus on sexual harassment and accountability.
Beyond its lively and informed tone, the book’s minimalist elegance is a point of visual appeal. Though there are no photographs of the various cocktails, the streamlined yet flourished color theme avoids clutter, evoking feminine fortitude. And in addressing the precarity of women’s health funding, along with women’s hormonal complexities and estrogen “delivery systems,” the book features a recipe for “tomato-water martinis” to ease menopausal “rough edges.”
Spirited in both a literal and social context, When They Go Low, We Go Highball is a rousing cocktail recipe collection that evokes feminine power and potential.
Reviewed by
Meg Nola
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
