Coffee A Comprehensive Guide to the Bean, the Beverage, and the Industry

Jonathan Morris, Robert W. Thurston, Shawn Steiman — 2013

Coffee: A Comprehensive Guide to the Bean, the Beverage, and the Industry offers a definitive guide to the many rich dimensions of the bean and the beverage around the world. Leading experts from business and academia consider coffee’s history, global spread, cultivation, preparation, marketing, and the environmental and social issues surrounding it today. They discuss, for example, the impact of globalization; the many definitions of organic, direct trade, and fair trade; the health of female farmers; the relationships among shade, birds, and coffee; roasting as an art and a science; and where profits are made in the commodity chain. Drawing on interviews and the lives of people working in the business—from pickers and roasters to coffee bar owners and consumers—this book brings a compelling human side to the story. The authors avoid romanticizing or demonizing any group in the business. They consider basic but widely misunderstood issues such as who adds value to the bean, the constraints of peasant life, and the impact of climate change. Moving beyond simple answers, they represent various participants in the supply chain and a range of opinions about problems and suggested solutions in the industry. Coffee offers a multidimensional examination of a deceptively everyday but extremely complex commodity that remains at the center of many millions of lives. Tracing coffee’s journey from field to cup, this handbook to one of the world’s favorite beverages is an essential guide for professionals, coffee lovers, and students alike. Contributions by: Sarah Allen, Jonathan D. Baker, Peter S. Baker, Jonathan Wesley Bell, Clare Benfield, H. C. "Skip" Bittenbender, Connie Blumhardt, Willem Boot, Carlos H. J. Brando, August Burns, Luis Alberto Cuéllar, Olga Cuellar, Kenneth Davids, Jim Fadden, Elijah K. Gichuru, Jeremy Haggar, Andrew Hetzel, George Howell, Juliana Jaramillo, Phyllis Johnson, Lawrence W. Jones, Alf Kramer, Ted Lingle, Stuart McCook, Michelle Craig McDonald, Sunalini Menon, Jonathan Morris, Joan Obra, Price Peterson, Rick Peyser, Sergii Reminny, Paul Rice, Robert Rice, Carlos Saenz, Vincenzo Sandalj, Jinap Selamat, Colin Smith, Shawn Steiman, Robert W. Thurston, Steven Topik, Tatsushi Ueshima, Camilla C. Valeur, Geoff Watts, and Britta Zeitemann

Reviews

Jeni Enjaian@jenienjaian

Oct 30, 2021

This book could have been great. However, a number of things kept me from being able to recommend it at all. First, the print was entirely too small. It's aesthetic detail but it's pretty important. Second, any logical organization was completely missing from what I've discovered later was a series of essays on the coffee topic. The title states that it's a guide and know where mentions that it's forms of over 50 different essays. That was a big turn off. Back to the organization, the author/editor chose to start the book with a series of essays all about the injustice/ill-treatment up for workers. He then ends the book with a section on history and how coffee is roasted. Not only is that a logical but by the time the raise their reaches that point they are probably turned off of the topic in general. I know I was. Want those history essays were better it was not enough to make up for everything that's already been mentioned. I don't recommend this book and hope that there are better books about coffee in the world.