Product Description
What is this elixir that fuels our destiny? Stewart Lee Allen's insatiable, unquenchable thirst for the answer carries him across forbidden borders and several continents as he pursues the precious and little-known catalytic effect of the ambrosial brew upon world empires and mankind. He also documents the unconscionable attempts to suppress coffee. With Paris one "vast caf," for instance, Napoleon banned coffee, but then was summarily overthrown and exiled. His last request: a cup of St. Helena's best. Likewise, Germany's long anti-coffee campaigns kept java from offering its solace to the lower classes. In 1930 German workers voted Adolf Hitler into power.
In America the military tried for fifty years to produce an easily brewed cup for battlefield use, and did. The perfection of instant coffee triggered a 3,000 percent jump in consumption during World War I and stimulated the rise of the United States to world-class power.
From the Back Cover
Coffeepot give us peace / coffeepot let children grow / let our wealth swell / please protect us from evils / give us rain and grass Ethiopian Prayer
Magic cup / carry me above the traffic jam. Keep me civil in the subway / And forgive my employer, as you forgive me. Amen A Western Prayer
Stewart Lee Allen makes the very convincing argument that civilisation is largely based on coffee drinking (or chewing). Until the art of coffee guzzling arrived in the great cities, the only way to quench a thirst was to drink ale, which is hardly the best method for keeping rational, and beery philosophy is rarely watertight in the sober light of day, whereas caffeinated, over analytical thought, makes serious progress.
Allen traces the development of world wide coffee consumption by travelling to all the places of historical significance, for this particular subject. Starting in Ethiopia, continuing through Northern Africa, over to Asia, becoming involved in art smuggling and illegal passport wrangling, and off to Europe. There he covers revolutions and enlightenment. And then finally to America, in search for the most soulful coffee he can find.
Repeatedly likened to a caffeing fuelled Gonzo, this story is both incredibly funny as well as thoroughly educational.
Stewart Lee Allen was born in California, and has lived in Kathmandu, Sydney, Brooklyn and Calcutta. A widely published journalist he is also the author of an acclaimed collection of stories, The Art of Rape.
