GOD IN A CUP offers an energetic international pursuit for the Perfect Cups of Coffee.

Most notable, apart from the actual tasting, is that the growth of super expensive Specialty Coffees
ideally enabled small farmers to regrow their neglected coffee trees and move away from poverty
in both African and Central American countries.

Along the way, readers learn origins, how coffee grows inside a red Cherry and gets washed, fermented
and ultimately shipped away and roasted.

On the down side, "cupping" as a replacement for the layperson's more accessible "Tasting"
is not merely pretentious, annoying, in-group divisive, but just plain goofy:
"Let's go cup a cup of coffee!" or "How does your cup cup?" C'mon.

It's also a definite slow mover through the bios. Photos would be welcome to spice up the cup
as the story finally sparks up when the author travels to Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Burundi.

La Esmeraldo Special Geishas were a lot of new information, as were each of the big player companies in the U.S.

Unfortunately, more variety was needed in with personality burn-out and mucho repletion .

And, from The Norton book of NATURE WRITING comes this:

"Their paintings, according to art historians of the period ((nineteenth century)),
were the inspirations of men and women who "saw the face of God"
in the prairies and mountains and along the river bottoms."

Bet their strong cups tasted pretty fine! ( )

Written in disposable filler-material newspaper fluff-piece style. Extended descriptions to boost word count that add nothing to the story. ( )

This is a terrifically researched, if only moderately well-written, story of the current cutting edge of American coffee importers and roasters. Following employees of Intelligencia, Counter Culture, Stumptown, and other high-profile high-end coffee purveyors, the authors travels to Africa and Central America to tell the story of specialty coffee, how it's grown, and how the relationships among the farmers, importers/exporters, roasters, and retailers works. Although I feel that the focus was a little narrow (is there any specialty coffee in Europe?), the depth of research and the truly compelling stories of these people was well worth the read. After reading this book, I'm going to be hard pressed (French pressed?) not to increase my coffee consumption! ( )

This book made me look at my coffee with even more love. To understand the road the bean traveled to reach my cup. The farmers, the roaster and finally they way I brew, all affecting the taste. The buyers that try to help the farmer and the only reward is better coffee for all of us. The obsession these coffee guys have with making better coffee, equals the obsessions of wine lovers. With tastings (called cupping) and best of competition to growing better beans.

A fascinating story of coffee and those who love it ( )

Much like coffee itself, this book gets repetitive. Unfortunately, it does not reach the level of caffeine dependency. There. I got the obvious out of the way.

I love microhistories, as many people apparently do. The format invites detail and overexamination of minutae. IMHO, it is the author's job to make that minutae interesting enough to capture the attention of the uninitiated and make them just as obsessive as the characters. This brings to mind the writing of Chandler Burr. I don't know if Ms. Weissman failed in this regard or if I am just not one of the Supertasters who would ever be able to differentiate between the fantastic and the merely good. The fault may be mine, but I still may not even finish this book.

For the record, I am a trained barista (though it has been a few years) and pull my own shots at home every day. ( )