Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How it Transformed Our World [Paperback]

Resting next to your mouse or keyboard - at a safe distance! - your cuppa steams aromatically. The morning coffee, whether at home or work, is the "kick-starter" of many a person's day. For some, it must be a special flavour, brewed to taste, yet often mixed with sweeteners or cow juice, real or otherwise. For the rest, anything hot and caffeine-laced is sufficient. Yet almost none of us ask where that beverage came from, why we drink it and why North Americans stick with coffee and others with tea. Mark Pendergrast asked, and asked some more and in many places. The result is this captivating book relating the history of our favourite beverage. It must be important if we write songs about it.

Opening by relating the Ethiopian myth of the goat-herd wanting to learn why his charges danced about in the bush, Pendergrast quickly traces the spread of coffee elsewhere. Coffee houses, beginning long ago, became quickly popular as gathering places. News and gossip were swopped over steaming cups. Patrons didn't exactly dance about as the goats did, but there must have been something more than just lounging about. The coffee house, viewed as a den of vice or worse, sedition, has been banned by various insecure rulers. Charles II of England, fearful his reign might go the way of his father's, tried to shut them down. He was correct, since the howl of protest might have generated another rebellion. The king withdrew the ban.

While coffee houses remained in place, some becoming gloriously decorated institutions, it was the home market that enlarged the role of coffee. Pendergrast tracks that shift with a colourful history of coffee's economic growth in the Western Hemisphere. As tea was consumed in Britain in a form of support for the East India Company, so did coffee rise as part of North American patriotic fervour. The nascent United States took up coffee with alacrity, the habit made easier by the proximity of the growing nations. The author notes that once coffee took root in Brazil, that nation became the backbone of the coffee industry.

Coffee's status as a cash crop, however, made it vulnerable to numerous forces - not the least weather. Grown at various elevations, but rarely on environmentally stable plains, coffee is subject to storms and frosts. Like grape vines, coffee is also vulnerable to a virus infestation. Prices rise and fall in a highly unpredictable market. Pendergrast notes how at the beginning of the 20th Century, the US penchant for cheap coffee led the government to make early attempts at meddling with Brazil's domestic economy. It was easy to claim Brazil's growers and wholesalers were "fixing" prices by storing millions of bags in warehouses, when their real intention was price stablilisation.

Pendergrast traces the growth of this industry with a fine flair for detail. Price shifts, marketing techniques, changes in tastes and the growth of dealers from small shops to national chains are all covered well. While there are many names and control shifts about in various locations, the author keeps us with him as he recounts the interactions. There is little technical to distract or delay the reader - he keeps the chemistry of coffee tucked away in a final chapter. To reach that point, however, the reader is guided through the founding and expansion of such names as Folger's, Hills Brothers and A&P. It's not all pleasant reading, of course. We must pause to cope with the palate-insulting phenomenon of "instant" coffee [you don't actually drink that stuff, do you?]. There are a few unpleasant people to meet. However, we also learn that with home-served coffee being served by sometimes abused housewives, some enterprising women entered the coffee trade arena. Some of these did so well they are legends in the industry.

This is an excellent book on a "hidden" topic. To understand why coffee prices shift and wobble, why this is the second most valuable resource in the world, why one brand is a delight to drink while another goes down the drain after the first taste, this is the place to find out. While you're ordering your copy, i'll just nip off to the kitchen for another cuppa . . . [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

This is an incredible book. The research must have taken years. The author provides fascinating stories over hundreds of years of coffee's history. I was most taken with the stuff on coffee in America over the last couple of centuries. The author obviously respects Alfred Peet tremendously, but he also gives a balanced account of the rise of Starbucks. And the C.W. Post section is hilarious. Americana at its best.

I bought this book on a caprice at my local borders. I love coffee and thought it might make for interesting brousing. Instead I read the entire book (more than 400 pages of text) in two sittings. This is a fascinating look at coffee's impact on the world with special emphasis on the last 300 years. It has dozens of fascinating photographs that range from exploited workers to "Mrs. Olson" to the original Starbucks logo. I can say honestly that anyone who enjoys a morning cup of joe should read this book.