An Atlantic review is the stimulus that got me interested in this modern scholarly review of the most ubiquitous drink in the modern world, written by a New York professor. More than you ever needed or wanted to know about your morning cuppa, the book nevertheless leaves out much about the world of coffee. There is no mention of the different decaffeination processes, the different chemical composition of different coffees, nothing about the modern genetics, or the additives in such brands as Swiss or French vanilla.
What there is is a recital of thousands of historical facts in short simple sentences of dry humourless prose. Most of these relate to the historical development of the global coffee trade, the oppression of Salvadoran coffee workers, the duplicity of the United States’ imperialism in Salvadoran politics, and the history of the Hill’s Brothers family enterprise there. The author seems at times to be more interested in the history of El Salvador than the history of coffee.
Weaving in a whole chapter on the first law of thermodynamics as understood in the mid 1800s is a real stretch. There is considerable hyperbole about the importance of coffee in global affairs. “The early United States took shape as a political and economic project around the coffee trade, as commercial interest used coffee to build the national economy and foreign policy makers used it to stabilize and later increase the power of the United States in the world.”
Another sobering quote: “In 1859, the U.S. Department of Agriculture made an investigation into adulterants and dyes in coffee and found lead chromate, barium sulphate and burnt bones.”
Erudite and extensively researched (140 pages of notes, a 78 page bibliography, and a 54 page index in the ebook edition) there is no doubt the the author knows his subject well. But I don’t think he knows his readership. This may become a reference tome for courses on international trade, Latin American history, and agriculture, or industrial relations, but I can’t recommend it for the general public.
The Passionate Reader 