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Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company

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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.3373
EAN: 9780393060713
ISBN: 0393060713
Label: W. W. Norton & Company
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 323
Publication Date: 2005-06-27
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Studio: W. W. Norton & Company

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Editorial Reviews:

Linking alchemy, anthropology, politics, and science, Antony Wild uncovers the intrigue that coffee has woven into its 500-year history.

Coffee trader and historian Antony Wild delivers a rollicking history of the most valuable legally traded commodity in the world after oil—and an industry that employs one hundred million people throughout the world.

From obscure beginnings in East Africa in the fifteenth century as a stimulant in religious devotion, coffee became an imperial commodity, produced by poor tropical countries and consumed by rich temperate ones. Through the centuries, the influence of coffee on the rise of capitalism and its institutions has been enormous. Revolutions were once hatched in coffeehouses, commercial alliances forged, secret societies formed, and politics and art endlessly debated.

Today, while coffee chains spread like wildfire, coffee-producing countries are in crisis: with prices at a historic low, they are plagued by unprecedented unemployment, abandoned farms, enforced migration, and massive social disruption.

Bridging the gap between coffee's dismal colonial past and its perilous corporate present, Coffee reveals the shocking exploitation that has always lurked at the heart of the industry. 8 pages of color illustrations.

Spotlight customer reviews:

Customer Rating:

Summary: Fascinating blend of History, Myth, and Speculation
Comment: This is at my local coffee shop and I read some of it everytime I have coffee. Overall, it is fascinating and well written. Wonderful to know more about my dailey brew.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Coffee is not another «poor versus rich» thing
Comment: There are some excellent books about coffee and its history. Some books about its politics and some about the business it engenders. Most of non technical coffee books tend to be a little biased against the rich world. This one is no exception.
Poor world producers and rich world consumers are the two sides of the same coin and as a matter of fact, unregulated, this market tends to behave like any other market: supply and demand drives it.
The fact is that Vietnam entered the Market «en force» in the nineties and suddenly the coffee world changed. Supply shot up overnight and demand, although it increased did not set up the supply surge. Thus, prices went down.
For those who know the coffee market, boom and bust is the rule. A surge in price would trigger a surge in production as new land would be put to use for coffee growing thus generating a supply bubble. Therefore, prices would fall, land would be set aside for other uses and people would go out of business. With or without ICO that has been the rule throughout the XXth century.
The thing is that coffee works in five years cycle, that is the normal time for a coffee tree to grow to mature production, and therefore to yield new coffee on the market until there is too much. These cycles are extremely difficult to anticipate - those who would do it would be billionaires - and are subject to hazards like frost or markets busts.
But the nineties also saw the coming of age of specialty coffees and the glorification of the Arabica kind. Suddenly, Blue Mountain or Kona coffees would fetch stratospheric prices.
Another piece of the puzzle is that coffee distribution is one of the most elaborated and financially demanding businesses, conducing to a huge concentration of the market. It therefore appears as if big corporation was after poor people profits.
This is a market where no evident truths are forthcoming and the most useless thing to do is to blame the rich, amongst which the inevitable US of A.
That Vietnam wanted to have a try on cash crop production is not the fault of Capitol Hill, and that they were hugely successful still less.
I think this book which enlightens some aspects of the coffee trade is trying to find culprits but offers no solutions. In ten years time, when the trend will have reversed and back again, Whose fault will it be?

Customer Rating:

Summary: No Enlightenment in this Dark History
Comment: Apparently "Coffee: A Dark History" was written by a man who didn't take his mother's advice and may actually have believed everything he read. Speculation, legends, myths, semi-documented accounts, and a smattering of facts all seem to be given equal weight in this book.

One gets the feeling that the author wants to believe that coffee use goes back to antiquity, even though he tells you he can't provide any evidence of that. More than once there is a vague reference to the Biblical "forbidden tree of knowledge" which could have been...coffee! In fact, any time a dark beverage is mentioned in any ancient writings it might have been coffee! Though a reading of the context usually indicates that it was not.

The book presents material such as the discredited German study from the early 90's which claimed an analysis of the hair of 3000 year old Egyptian mummies contained cocaine and nicotine (but not caffeine). There is no scientific or historical support suggesting the ancient Egyptians had access to New World plants like coca or tobacco. There is no reason to even give it a one line mention in the book. Elsewhere there is mention of Islamic Arabs in the 5th century, although Mohamed wasn't born until the 6th century.

When so many of the author's "facts" are in error, it's hard to know when he may have gotten something right. (Even an blind pig finds the occasional truffle, right?) If you really want to know something about the history of coffee, consult at least two other books after reading this one.

To add insult to injury, it's not even a lively or entertaining read. Not recommended.

Customer Rating:

Summary: A spider shouldn't drink it
Comment: Antony Wild's (2004) book is The Good Tea and Coffee Company book of the month for January 2007.

At the outset, it claims to be a 'dark' history and it certainly doesn't disappoint in that respect.

Though sounding a little extravagant in portraying coffee as the 'forbidden fruit' in the Garden of Eden of the Old Testament, each chapter touches on sensitive ethical issues which are moving ever higher on the priority list of European consumers.

Tracing the origins of the cultivation of coffee back to the Yemen and the early attempts to create plantations elsewhere by The East India Company, we are taken on a journey of unexpected complexity as coffee finds its way into the social and religeous infrastracture of every continent it touches.

By the end of the book, we've had a lot more for our money than simply history. Antony Wild makes us look anew at something we have grown up with and almost taken for granted. He gives us the tools we need to think again about coffee - to bring it out of the darkness.. and into the light.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Good Beans, half-brewed
Comment: One of the psychological effects of stimulant drugs is that they
are disinhibiting. That is, they erode our reluctances and our
inertia, they lull the pinch-nosed censor that lives in each of
us and stir up the grinning satyr. (Certain stimulants, like
the amphetamines, are so radically disinhibiting that their use
is associated with violent and self-destructive behaviour ).
There is probably no inhibition that we lay down as joyfully
as shyness and in the customary doses, that's just what
caffeine does. You might say that it turns up the pressure
on the expression of stray thoughts and feelings while it
loosens the valve that holds them in.

It's no surprise then that coffee was introduced
to Europe along with a social setting that harmonized
exquisitely with its use. The setting was the coffee
house, a place where coffee was served and conversation
was encouraged. The first coffeee house in England was
founded (in Oxford) by a man named Jacobs who brought
both the beverage and the idea with him from the Middle East.
The brew and the place proved to be very popular with
the students . It was so popular as a focus for meeting
and discussion that the Royal Society was founded there
in 1650. Lloyd's Coffee House in London eventually became
the famous insurance institution.
It's likely that the stimulant effects of coffee
would have been less appreciated had there not also been
an environment where those effects could be seen as a
virtue. It's hard to imagine that the taste would have
been appreciated at all if it had been presented by itself.
The popular reaction to coffee was nothing like
a response to a new food and everything like a response
to a medicine. Authorities in Prussia and England tried
to ban coffee and coffeehouses. Voltaire drank an
astonishing 50 cups a day and claimed that he could
not have written philosophy without it. Immanuel Kant
was reported to have whimpered when his coffee was
delayed. Perhaps most instructive is the testimony of
Balzac whose 100 novels suggest a certain frenzied
hyperactivity. Speaking of the effects of coffee, he said

."..Ideas begin to move like the Grand Army
of the Republic on the battlefield. Things remembered
arrive at full gallop. The light cavalry of comparisons
delivers charges, the artillery of logic hurries up with
trains of ammunition, the shafts of wit start up like
sharpshooters. Similies arise, the paper is covered
with ink; for the struggle begins and is concluded with
torrents of black water, just like a battle with powder."

This feverish testimony isn't an endorsement of flavor,
aroma and body., it's a love song to a psychoactive drug.
In the same way, Wild's useful book concentrates its energy
on the social and economic aspects of
the coffee trade. This discussion is not well-documented and
has a bit of a testy anti-american bias. The (to me) central
question of how this bitter concoction came to be the subject
of a grand connoisseurship is left untouched.

None the less, a useful book to introduce the subject.

--Lynn Hoffman, author of THE NEW SHORT COURSE IN WINE and
the forthcoming novel bang BANG from Kunati Books.ISBN 9781601640005

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