Uncommon Grounds
The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World

I'm giving this book only 2 stars due to poor writing and even worse editing. It seems as if after the first 175 pages the editors (feeling the same as I did) got bored reading the manuscript and just sent it to the printers out of exhaustion. This is most evident when you get to the last 50 pages,......more

THE GOOD: Detailed accounts of the competitive marketing tactics used by coffee companies in America throughout the past hundred plus years, as well as the history of the bean as it influenced coffee producing countries and their export relationships with the United States. THE BAD: Writing with a jo......more

Years ago, I'd read a book called The Devil's Cup by Stewart Lee Allen, which functioned as a combination travelogue/history of coffee throughout the world, and thoroughly enjoyed it. The author traveled throughout Africa and the Middle East meeting unsavory characters and having memorable misadvent......more

This is an interesting look at all the political and economic forces that interacted with perhaps the most influential beverage of our time. Anecdotes about the trajectories of the coffee industry in the 19th and 20th centuries are where this book shone the most for me. The author has clearly done e......more