Excerpt from my review at my blog, The Itinerant Librarian:

"Coffee is one of my favorite topics. I enjoy the drink, and I like reading about the lore and history around it, so I thought this would be a good book on the topic. It was not to be."

Visit my blog to read the rest. Link: http://itinerantlibrarian.blogspot.com/2013/04/booknote-coffee-dark-history.html ( )

Witty a.nd well-informed. almost a complete history of world history viewed from the bottom of a coffee cup.Leitmotiv is St Helena ( which has great coffee but it never caught on) and Napoleon who was a crab and miserable bungler. Wild is a former coffee trader turned filial historian so he has all the facts in his apron pocket and well able to overturn some myths. The book loses a bit of momentum when coming to modern times: the case histories of exploitation (Latin America especially) make rather heavy reading after the more anecdotal style of the first part.

some good turns of phrase:
" the only thing instant coffee has in common with real coffee is that both bear the same name"
An espresso machine is the best way of making a good coffee, but not a good way of making the best coffee" Not quite clear what is the way for best coffee but i think it's still the cafetière. Surprisingly in the after-notes he says he normally drinks just a "decent supermarket Guatemalan". Coffee is packed with marketing spin and illusions. Freshness really matters, at every stage. ( )

A very interesting and quite readable history of Coffee, separating myth from history and looking at our modern habits with coffee and asking how sustainable some of our habits are. A lot of the questions are how we can afford to continue exploitation without it having long-term issues.

I really did enjoy reading it and it did highlight some issues I have noticed myself. I will have to continue moving more and more of my buying to fair trade. Though Wild does point out that companies who use Fair Trade to make themselves look good are sometimes only codding themselves. ( )