By Stephen Jermanok, Globe Correspondent

With his dangling mop of white hair atop his lanky frame and dark glasses resting on the cradle of his nose, Wayne Curtis might easily be mistaken for a professor. When he opens his mouth to speak, the perception is prolonged by juicy tidbits of knowledge dispensed as if on a fast assembly line. You have to be quick to grab them, as Curtis segues rapidly from such disparate subjects as turn-of-the-20th-century Chicago architecture to West Coast wax museums to George Washington’s trip to Barbados.

But tonight, the author of “And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails” (Crown, 2006) holds court on arguably his favorite subject, alcohol.
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