Authors Diane Lapis and Anne Peck-Davis have merrily combined their love of vintage 1930s and 1940s colorful linen postcards with their appreciation of classic cocktails from the golden age of post-Prohibition drinking in their recently published book “Cocktails Across America.”

They have matched up notable drinks with postcards from bars, hotels or cities where they were created and with which they are lastingly associated.

Local imbibers will be happy to note that the Lord Baltimore Hotel’s Diamondback Cocktail is included along with a wonderful late 1920s postcard showing the hotel’s facade and a busy Baltimore Street filled with vintage autos and streetcars.

They have also included a whimsical advertising poster of a turtle in a top hat. It was the handwork of Landy R. Hales, a Baltimore advertising artist.

The authors say the cocktail was created in the hotel’s Diamondback Lounge in the lower lobby, which could accommodate 100 thirsty patrons. The cocktail’s actual birth date remains unknown. It was, however, first mentioned in Ted Saucier’s 1951 book “Bottoms Up.”

No one knows when it vanished from the hotel’s eight-page bar menu, which in 1956 boasted more than “sixty cocktails, 113 different spirits, and fifteen beers,” the authors write.

A phone call to the Lord Baltimore the other day revealed that they had no knowledge of the Diamondback Cocktail’s prior existence, much less how to make it.

fred.rasmussen@baltsun.com