"Uncommon Grounds" tells the story of coffee from its discovery on a hill in Abyssinia to its role in intrigue in the American colonies to its rise...
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Jan 01, 2009
Paul
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If you ever wanted to know the full and total history of the bewitching brew so many of us drink, otherwise known as "coffee", then you can't go wrong with this book.
It talks about everything for coffee - the origins, the history, the long and bloody history of the bean and its dominance for so long of Brazilian crops. How it was there to take the place of tea after the Boston Tea Party, how it was made and marketed in the early days, and all the companies that have been i More...
It talks about everything for coffee - the origins, the history, the long and bloody history of the bean and its dominance for so long of Brazilian crops. How it was there to take the place of tea after the Boston Tea Party, how it was made and marketed in the early days, and all the companies that have been i More...
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Dec 17, 2009
Sean
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An excellent and exhaustive commodity history, with a sharp focus on the business aspect of everyone's favorite drink, especially from the nineteenth century forward.
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Aug 10, 2011
Alex
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This book may end up hooking me on coffee. It's not a fantastic book -- too much broad survey of names and events discussed briefly and forgotten, too little ongoing historical or scientific analysis -- but despite that, the care and energy and richness of coffee as a human endeavor really came through. (As did the misery and poverty of the growers.) Besides lowering my resistance to drinking coffee regularly, I also picked up quite a number of interesting historical factoids, and can't help
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Jun 21, 2011
Marks54
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This book presents a history of coffee. It is well written and very entertaining, both in just informing about the details of coffee - for those who didn't know or who had been stuck on instant. I admit this is less a problem today. It is also important for discussing how coffee and been branded and sold in the US. This does not go into detail on the Starbucks phenomenon, but it is highly relevant on most other aspects of the business. This is a really quotable source of cool data for conve
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Aug 26, 2011
Gabrielle
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This book was definitely interesting, whether you are a coffee addict and wanted to know more about why it is such an important part of society or if you just like to read about the history and development of certain societal staples. I will admit that there are parts of this book that I skimmed and skipped because I felt that they were repetitive and not exactly what I was looking for in terms of information.
Overall for a book that is meant to educate the reader with fact after fact, it w More...
Overall for a book that is meant to educate the reader with fact after fact, it w More...
Dec 15, 2008
Danielle
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This is actually a really good book for the genre- I'm never sure if the stars are supposed to correlate to my internal satisfaction level entirely, or if some space is to be made for differences in genre. In any case, this book is a history of the advertising and economics of coffee and goes a long way to explaining the relative poverty of South America's coffee producing countries. It's also a fairly snobby history of how a cuppa joe's been brewed in this country since its inception- snobby
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Feb 20, 2009
Meg
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I have to give the author credit; it can't have been easy to make coffee soporific. But that's just what Mark Pendergrast has done with Uncommon Grounds!
"Coffee provides one fascinating thread, stitching together the disciplines of history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, medicine, and business, and offering a way to follow the interactions that have formed a global economy," he states in the concluding chapter. I totally agree; I think that that would have been a fa More...
"Coffee provides one fascinating thread, stitching together the disciplines of history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, medicine, and business, and offering a way to follow the interactions that have formed a global economy," he states in the concluding chapter. I totally agree; I think that that would have been a fa More...
Aug 23, 2008
Dawn
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If you want an in depth, detailed look at the history of coffee, this is a great book to pick up. From its discovery in Africa, to how it became the second largest export in the world (with oil being the first); from plantation to cup, and everything in between, this book covers it all. It even describes the evolution of brewing techniques and instant coffees, weaving the history of coffee in with the history of world.
I work in the coffee industry as mostly a barista. I picked u More...
I work in the coffee industry as mostly a barista. I picked u More...
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Aug 04, 2008
KeTURah
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I'm giving this book only 2 stars due to poor writing and even worse editing. It seems as if after the first 175 pages the editors (feeling the same as I did) got bored reading the manuscript and just sent it to the printers out of exhaustion. This is most evident when you get to the last 50 pages, when we finally learn the most basic facts about the thing we had been reading about for such a painfully long time: coffee's chemical composition, and the scientific facts about caffeine's affect on
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Nov 20, 2009
Luke
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Pretty interesting book and definitely a fascinating history.
With that said, this book was a bit of a hard read. Comprising 420 pages and with Pendergrast being an economic historian, for a layperson the book was dense and detail rich to a fault. And to a coffee guy like myself, the history was a bit dry.
Still, with coffee being the 2nd biggest legally traded commodity (after oil), this book is worth leafing through if you're interested in coffee, world trade, and/or histo More...
With that said, this book was a bit of a hard read. Comprising 420 pages and with Pendergrast being an economic historian, for a layperson the book was dense and detail rich to a fault. And to a coffee guy like myself, the history was a bit dry.
Still, with coffee being the 2nd biggest legally traded commodity (after oil), this book is worth leafing through if you're interested in coffee, world trade, and/or histo More...
Dec 08, 2008
Drew
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I didn't expect a book about the history of a commodity to be so interesting. This book is full of neat anecdotes of capitalist intrigue and lots of little nuggets about the history of coffee. Did you know before we had a decent way to filter coffee, people used to put eggs and fish in it? To "clarify" it, supposedly. That's pretty crazy.
Also gives a number of tips on making good coffee. Required reading for any addict.
Also gives a number of tips on making good coffee. Required reading for any addict.
Jan 05, 2012
Emily
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I used this book in some of my coffee research and felt badly not reading the entire book before returning to the library. It's a thorough history of coffee focusing mostly on the western coffee consumption from the 17th century onward and the political injustices of coffee production. My favorite parts of the book are the period photos, advertisements, and images included in several sections throughout the chapters.
May 14, 2009
Drew
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Scholarly, very well researched. Uncommon Grounds provides insight to the socio-political role of coffee throughout history. I found particularly enlightening the chapters that focused on the US manipulation of markets and the intervention in the politics of producing nations in the Caribbean and South American nations in the 19th and early 20th century – foreshadowing the US approach to the oil producing nations during the 20th and early 21st century.
Jun 19, 2011
Emily
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Had this book not been on a friend's shelf while I was staying with her, I might never have come across the book. That would have been quite a shame. As an avid coffee drinker, I've never given much thought to everything that goes into the coffee trade. This book was insightful and provided a fascinating account of the coffee industry throughout time. Politics, advertising, social trends and the coffee bean itself are all chronicled in this book. I am no longer wondering why people say "
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Jul 12, 2009
Julie H.
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I know it's a key element in my world, so I was keen to read this entertaining--and highly informative--history of coffee and its influences that have been felt on a global scale. Pendergast has chronicled other beverages of importance. (Be sure to check out his book on Coca-Cola, if you've not done so.) A very interesting read.
Jun 03, 2008
Henry
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I thought that this book was pretty good. I was really able to see how my coffee was produced every single time i drink it. It made me realize how important it was to give thanks to those who had helped sort and helped pick the coffee beans because they make so little money that it was not enough to support their families. The employees of the coffee growing plantations in Ethiopia, Africa, is making about $1 per day. Most of the time their salary depended on how well the coffee was bing sold. I
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Apr 26, 2010
Jim
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I confess that I tried; I tried to sit ddown and read the history of coffee, and it was just too much. Too much history, and too much information to absorb. It's a wonderful book, but overwhelming.
Sep 24, 2011
Ahmad
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Detail membahas sejarah kopi, sejak ditemukan di Ethiopia, penyebarannya ke seluruh dunia, tanggapan orang-orang terhadapnya, hingga kopi pada era kini.
Jul 10, 2011
Mumby
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Best thing about this book, it's super informative and not boring. You will learn everything you wanted to know abouy coffee while being entertained.
Jul 09, 2011
I began this last fall, but got distracted by other projects. Hope to pick it back up as the fall rolls around again.
Apr 02, 2011
James
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I wanted to REALLY like this, but this was too much history. Actually finished in Tyler 2 years later
Sep 05, 2011
Permies.world
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I'm halfway through this book and loving it. The author writes so well that you can't help but be drawn into the whole history of coffee.
Apr 27, 2011
Coffee, the story of a bean that changed the world. Mostly about advertising and such
Jan 30, 2012
Luke
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Overall, a wonderfully rich and ambitious work. It really is everything I wanted to know about coffee (and more).
A bit too much detail regarding big coffee business and politics (especially in the period 1930 - 1970) but I suppose Folgers and Maxwell House were the kings of coffee then, and judging their current status against their status of the past is unfair.
Interestingly, this book taught me why my father (a coffee drinker forged in the 60s and 70s) likes weak, terrible b
A bit too much detail regarding big coffee business and politics (especially in the period 1930 - 1970) but I suppose Folgers and Maxwell House were the kings of coffee then, and judging their current status against their status of the past is unfair.
Interestingly, this book taught me why my father (a coffee drinker forged in the 60s and 70s) likes weak, terrible b
