Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and how It Transformed Our World

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Since its discovery in an Ethiopian rainforest centuries ago, coffee has brewed up a rich and troubled history, according to Uncommon Grounds, a sweeping book by business writer Mark Pendergrast. Over the years, the beverage has fomented revolution, spurred deforestation, enriched a few while impoverishing the many, and addicted millions with its psychoactive caffeine. Coffee is now the world's second most valuable legal commodity, behind oil, according to Pendergrast, who is also author of For God, Country, and Coca-Cola.

"A good cup of coffee can turn the worst day tolerable, can provide an all-important moment of contemplation, can rekindle a romance," he writes. "And yet, poetic as its taste may be, coffee's history is rife with controversy and politics." For example, coffee bankrolled Idi Amin's genocidal regime in Uganda and the Sandinistas' revolution in Nicaragua. Uncommon Grounds provides some fascinating tidbits. Did you know that coffeehouses helped spawn the French and American revolutions? Or that coffee supplanted alcohol as a favorite breakfast drink in Britain in the late 1600s, and later became a patriotic American beverage after the Boston Tea Party? Pendergrast also details the rise and fall of regional coffee brands in the United States, the role of advertising in the industry, the global economic impact of coffee prices, and the recent emergence of specialty-coffee retailers--Starbucks, for example. Finally, he explores the social and environmental ramifications of coffee and highlights recent attempts to encourage a livable wage and environmental protection in coffee-producing nations such as Brazil. Pendergrast also includes an appendix on "how to brew the perfect cup." This wide-ranging book is a good read for those curious about the history and context behind that morning cup of coffee, as well as for those strictly interested in the business side of the industry. --Dan Ring


From Publishers Weekly
Caffeinated beverage enthusiast Pendergrast (For God, Country and Coca-Cola) approaches this history of the green bean with the zeal of an addict. His wide-ranging narrative takes readers from the legends about coffee's discoveryAthe most appealing of which, Pendergast writes, concerns an Ethiopian goatherd who wonders why his goats are dancing on their hind legs and butting one anotherAto the corporatization of the specialty cafe. Pendergrast focuses on the influence of the American coffee trade on the world's economies and cultures, further zeroing in on the political and economic history of Latin America. Coffee advertising, he shows, played a major role in expanding the American market. In 1952, a campaign by the Pan American Coffee Bureau helped institutionalize the coffee break in America. And the invention of the still ubiquitous Juan Valdez in a 1960 ad campaign caused name recognition for Colombian coffee to skyrocket within months of its introduction. The Valdez character romanticizes a very real phenomenonAthe painstaking process of tending and harvesting a coffee crop. Yet the price of a tall latte in America, Pendergrast notes, is a day's wage for many of the people who harvest it on South American hillsides. Pendergrast does not shy away from exploring such issues in his cogent histories of Starbucks and other firms. Throughout the book, asides like the coffee jones of health-food tycoon C.W. PostAwho raged against the evils of coffee and developed Postum as a substitute for regular brewAprovide welcome diversions. Pendergrast's broad vision, meticulous research and colloquial delivery combine aromatically, and he even throws in advice on how to brew the perfect cup. 76 duotones. Author tour. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
In this enlightening sociocultural chronicle, journalist Pendergrast (For God, Country & Coca-Cola) focuses on the popularity of coffee, especially in the Western Hemisphere. Coffee-drinking came late to the New World but was embraced almost immediately. It accompanied settlers on their way west (Native Americans referred to it as "black medicine") and was popular with soldiers in the Civil War and both world wars. Pendergrast's book is filled with stories about the rise (and fall) of coffee dynasties like Hills Brothers and Folgers and of how the fledgling advertising industry helped promote each. The book concludes with the advent of specialty firms like Starbucks. While it lacks the extensive industry overview that characterizes Gregory Dicum and Nina Luttinger's The Coffee Book: Anatomy of an Industry from Crop to the Last Drop (LJ 4/1/99), it provides substantial background on coffee production as well as making an entertaining yet serious attempt to understand the popularity of the beverage. Recommended for academic and larger public libraries.ARichard S. Drezen, Washington Post News Research Ctr., Washington, DC Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Betty Fussell
With wit and humor, Pendergrast has served up a rich blend of anecdote, character study, market analysis and social history.


From Scientific American
Coffee, one learns in this scholarly and entertaining book, was the subject of an early skirmish in the struggle for women's rights. In 1674, when coffeehouses were the rage in London but admitted only men, a pamphlet entitled The Womens Petition against Coffee appeared. It declared that "Excessive Ube of that Drying, Enfeebling Liquor" sapped the sexual vigor of men, causing "Grand Inconveniences" to women. That pamphlet provoked another: The Mens Answer to the Womens Petition, "Vindicating Their own Performances, and the Vertues of their Liquor." Pendergrast describes himself as a journalist and scholar. The scholar has done an enormous amount of research, evidenced by a bibliography running to more than 34 closely printed pages and a list of 244 people whom he interviewed. The journalist has produced a splendid tale, setting out all one could hope to know about coffee.


The Wall Street Journal, Paula Throckmorton Zakaria
...a focused and juicy history of our last legal and socially acceptable drug.


From Booklist
Pendergrast's sprightly, yet thoroughly scholarly, history of America's favorite hot beverage packs the pleasurable punch of a double espresso. From the drink's origins in sixth-century Ethiopia through the Arab introduction of coffee to Europe in the sixteenth century, the brown infusion has generated passion and intrigue. Tropical New World nations became economically (and politically) tied to a volatile market manipulated by financiers far from their shores. Pendergrast vividly sketches an amazing cast of characters created by the coffee trade, notably Hermann Sielcken, a coffee monopolist, and C. W. Post, who founded an empire promoting a coffee substitute. Pendergrast also limns the mutual growth of America's grocery chains and the nation's advertising industry, which created some of the earliest demand for brand-name products. As baby boomers matured, postwar expansion of specialty coffee roasters burgeoned in the eighties and yielded the mighty Starbuck's empire and those ubiquitous green and white paper cups that rival McDonald's arches as contemporary cultural icons. Mark Knoblauch


From Kirkus Reviews
An exhaustive, admirably ambitious examination of coffee's global impact, from its roots in 15th-century Ethiopia to its critical role in shaping the nations of Central and Latin America. Pendergrast (For God, Country, and Coca-Cola, 1993) explains almost everything we'd ever want to know about coffee. The story begins in the mountains of Ethiopia, where goat herders first discovered the pleasures of the coffee bean. Arab traders helped spread coffee to Europe, where it became a 17th-century sensation. Soon the imperial powers of Europe established coffee plantations from Java (a Dutch colony) to Brazil (a Portuguese colony) to Haiti (a French colony), enslaving the indigenous populations. Even after freeing themselves from centuries of imperial control, the coffee-growing nations remained under ``coffee oligarchies'' that exploited local peasants. Today, most coffee workers ``live in abject poverty without plumbing, electricity, [or] medical care.'' Afraid of leftist rebellion in Latin America and eager for low-cost coffee, the US has actively supported these oligarchies. Pendergrast does a fine job exploring the disturbing economic inequalities behind every cup of coffee. He also analyzes how the boom-and-bust cycles of the coffee harvest have destabilized nations like Brazil, Colombia, and Costa Rica. After WWI, coffee emerged as a major American industryadvertising helped turn Maxwell House, Folgers, and Hills Brothers into household names. With intense competition, coffee quality was often sacrificed for low price. By the 1960s, coffee quality was so low that a ``gourmet'' coffee movement emerged, led by purists such as Alfred Peet. While the ``gourmet'' coffee movement reacted against bland, mass-produced coffee, it's now identified with a corporate giant called Starbucks, whose aggressive tactics Pendergrast skillfully describes. Should be read by anyone curious about what goes into their daily cup of Javatoo often, good coffee isn't good for the people who produce it. (60 b&w photos) (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


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Caffeinated beverage enthusiast Pendergrast (For God, Country and Coca-Cola) approaches this history of the green bean with the zeal of an addict. His wide-ranging narrative takes readers from the legends about coffee's discovery--the most appealing of which, Pendergast writes, concerns an Ethiopian goatherd who wonders why his goats are dancing on their hind legs and butting one another--to the corporatization of the specialty cafe. Pendergrast focuses on the influence of the American coffee trade on the world's economies and cultures, further zeroing in on the political and economic history of Latin America. Coffee advertising, he shows, played a major role in expanding the American market. In 1952, a campaign by the Pan American Coffee Bureau helped institutionalize the coffee break in America. And the invention of the still ubiquitous Juan Valdez in a 1960 ad campaign caused name recognition for Colombian coffee to skyrocket within months of its introduction. The Valdez character romanticizes a very real phenomenon--the painstaking process of tending and harvesting a coffee crop. Yet the price of a tall latte in America, Pendergrast notes, is a day's wage for many of the people who harvest it on South American hillsides. Pendergrast does not shy away from exploring such issues in his cogent histories of Starbucks and other firms. Throughout the book, asides like the coffee jones of health-food tycoon C.W. Post--who raged against the evils of coffee and developed Postum as a substitute for regular brew--provide welcome diversions. Pendergrast's broad vision, meticulous research and colloquial delivery combine aromatically, and he even throws in advice on how to brew the perfect cup. 76 duotones. Author tour. (June) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information. Read all 12 "From The Critics" >


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