In thirteen chapters Paul Mullin mixes up a potent cocktail of working, drinking, family and Zen.

It all starts—where else?—at the Starting Gate: a shit-kicker country bar in Northern Maryland where the author first started working at the age of thirteen, and where his boss once shot a man dead for trying to rob the local drug store. Other jobs follow, like when he works as the only white kid on an all black labor crew at the National Archives, or the years he spends as a high-rise window cleaner in Manhattan.

An essential primer for anyone interested in Zen and/or cocktails, or for anyone who enjoys a good story as if told from the next barstool over.