Here are 100 books that God in a Cup fans have personally recommended if you like
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I have found coffee, or in fact just about any aspect of it, from pour-over to espresso, to be endlessly challenging and rewarding. My first visit to coffee farms was in 2004, to Ethiopia and Kenya. Since then I’ve been to dozens of farms in nine or ten countries. There is something about coffee people; they are wondrously generous about sharing their expertise, if they think you care and if you know the right questions to ask. Before going deeply into coffee, I was a professor of history, and I've continued to publish on topics as diverse as Stalin, the witch hunts in Europe and North America, and the body in the Anglosphere, 1880-1920.
Jonathan, with whom I worked on an earlier book on coffee with authors from around the world, presents the history of coffee in a wonderfully readable way. His book is filled with charming and informative photos and graphics. A professor at the University of Hertfordshire and a truly nice guy, Jonathan is an expert above all on Italian coffee. He is in demand, particularly for talks on coffee’s past and present in Europe.
Coffee is a global beverage: it is grown commercially on four continents, and consumed enthusiastically in all seven. There is even an Italian espresso machine on the International Space Station. Coffee's journey has taken it from the forests of Ethiopia to the fincas of Latin America, from Ottoman coffee houses to `Third Wave' cafes, and from the simple coffee pot to the capsule machine. In Coffee: A Global History, Jonathan Morris explains how the world acquired a taste for coffee, yet why coffee tastes so different throughout the world.
Morris discusses who drank coffee, as well as why and where,…
I’ve been working in coffee for nearly 20 years, and teaching people about coffee for most of that. I love sharing how interesting, diverse, and fun the world of coffee is, and I want people to enjoy and value the coffee they drink a little more. It is a passion and a career that’s taken me around the world, and continues to reinforce the idea that just a little effort or interest in your morning coffee has surprisingly large rewards. The books on this list inspired my own passion for coffee and I hope they do the same for you.
This deeper exploration of coffee culture in Japan, a place we all associate with tea, is an interesting and surprising read. The author’s time in Japan serves as the backbone for exploring aspects of gender, perfectionism, and how the cafe in Japan helps people stay punctual.
This fascinating book - part ethnography, part memoir - traces Japan's vibrant cafe society over one hundred and thirty years. Merry White traces Japan's coffee craze from the turn of the twentieth century, when Japan helped to launch the Brazilian coffee industry, to the present day, as uniquely Japanese ways with coffee surface in Europe and America. White's book takes up themes as diverse as gender, privacy, perfectionism, and urbanism. She shows how coffee and coffee spaces have been central to the formation of Japanese notions about the uses of public space, social change, modernity, and pleasure. White describes how…
I have found coffee, or in fact just about any aspect of it, from pour-over to espresso, to be endlessly challenging and rewarding. My first visit to coffee farms was in 2004, to Ethiopia and Kenya. Since then I’ve been to dozens of farms in nine or ten countries. There is something about coffee people; they are wondrously generous about sharing their expertise, if they think you care and if you know the right questions to ask. Before going deeply into coffee, I was a professor of history, and I've continued to publish on topics as diverse as Stalin, the witch hunts in Europe and North America, and the body in the Anglosphere, 1880-1920.
Anyone who would like to understand how coffee flavors develop, which is key to raising your level of sophistication about coffee, should pick up this book. Roasting green coffee beans is an art and science for which people are always trying new methods. The Book of Roast provides a detailed look at the history of roasting, from stovetop to massive machines, and tells why the best roaster takes such meticulous care in handling the beans. The latest and best methods of roasting and preparing coffee beverages are covered. In places, the book becomes a bit technically challenging, but it remains quite readable. For me, it was a great exploration of science plus taste. As one coffee expert put it to me, you can reveal the flavors in good beans (and you can ruin them quickly while roasting), but you can never improve upon them.
I have found coffee, or in fact just about any aspect of it, from pour-over to espresso, to be endlessly challenging and rewarding. My first visit to coffee farms was in 2004, to Ethiopia and Kenya. Since then I’ve been to dozens of farms in nine or ten countries. There is something about coffee people; they are wondrously generous about sharing their expertise, if they think you care and if you know the right questions to ask. Before going deeply into coffee, I was a professor of history, and I've continued to publish on topics as diverse as Stalin, the witch hunts in Europe and North America, and the body in the Anglosphere, 1880-1920.
McCook traces the global devastation of coffee trees around the world that began in 1869. His work is not just about coffee, but about the ways in which pathogens are spread by air, ships, birds, and even by humans tracking it into remote sites on their boots. So the book is about coffee but about much more: why do certain pathogens explode all of a sudden; how have farmers tried to cope with the fungus, which destroys entire trees and whole farms; what is the genetic stock of coffee now; why has rust suddenly appeared in Latin America in recent years; and what experiments are going on to try to defeat rust? Stuart, by the way, is a wonderful guy to meet and talk to about coffee and its pests. His book is absolutely readable!
The global coffee industry, which fuels the livelihoods of farmers, entrepreneurs, and consumers around the world, rests on fragile ecological foundations. In Coffee Is Not Forever, Stuart McCook explores the transnational story of this essential crop through a history of one of its most devastating diseases, the coffee leaf rust. He deftly synthesizes agricultural, social, and economic histories with plant genetics and plant pathology to investigate the increasing interdependence of the world's coffee-producing zones. In the process, he illuminates the progress and prognosis of the challenges--especially climate change--that pose an existential threat to a crop that global consumers often take…
I have found coffee, or in fact just about any aspect of it, from pour-over to espresso, to be endlessly challenging and rewarding. My first visit to coffee farms was in 2004, to Ethiopia and Kenya. Since then I’ve been to dozens of farms in nine or ten countries. There is something about coffee people; they are wondrously generous about sharing their expertise, if they think you care and if you know the right questions to ask. Before going deeply into coffee, I was a professor of history, and I've continued to publish on topics as diverse as Stalin, the witch hunts in Europe and North America, and the body in the Anglosphere, 1880-1920.
Coffee, sex, travel, exotic locales, romance, and at long last love. This novel has it all, made vivid through the story of a more or less ordinary Englishman in the late 1890s who finds that he has a remarkable talent for discovering and describing the flavors and the problems in brewed coffee. He goes to Ethiopia to learn more about coffee. There his adventures become, shall we say, quite vivid, and some remarkable twists appear. Nicely written by an international best-selling author. Used copies are really cheap. You will have fun reading this with a great cup of coffee.
It is 1895. Robert Wallis, would-be poet, bohemian and impoverished dandy, accepts a commission from coffee merchant Samuel Pinker to categorise the different tastes of coffee - and encounters Pinker's free-thinking daughters, Philomenia, Ada and Emily. As romance blossoms with Emily, Robert realises that the muse and marriage may not be incompatible after all.
Sent to Abyssinia to make his fortune in the coffee trade, he becomes obsessed with slave girl, Fikre. He decides to use the money he has saved to buy her from her owner - a decision that will change not only his own life, but the…
I’ve been working in coffee for nearly 20 years, and teaching people about coffee for most of that. I love sharing how interesting, diverse, and fun the world of coffee is, and I want people to enjoy and value the coffee they drink a little more. It is a passion and a career that’s taken me around the world, and continues to reinforce the idea that just a little effort or interest in your morning coffee has surprisingly large rewards. The books on this list inspired my own passion for coffee and I hope they do the same for you.
This is the book that started my obsession with coffee. It is really a travel book, using the spread of coffee from Ethiopia through to the rest of the world as its guide. It’s a fun read, and fascinating to see the way coffee was become entwined into so many different cultures in many different ways.
In this captivating book, Stewart Lee Allen treks three-quarters of the way around the world on a caffeinated quest to answer these profound questions: Did the advent of coffee give birth to an enlightened western civilization? Is coffee, indeed, the substance that drives history? From the cliffhanging villages of Southern Yemen, where coffee beans were first cultivated eight hundred years ago, to a cavernous coffeehouse in Calcutta, the drinking spot for two of India’s three Nobel Prize winners ... from Parisian salons and cafés where the French Revolution was born, to the roadside diners and chain restaurants of the good…
I’ve been working in coffee for nearly 20 years, and teaching people about coffee for most of that. I love sharing how interesting, diverse, and fun the world of coffee is, and I want people to enjoy and value the coffee they drink a little more. It is a passion and a career that’s taken me around the world, and continues to reinforce the idea that just a little effort or interest in your morning coffee has surprisingly large rewards. The books on this list inspired my own passion for coffee and I hope they do the same for you.
Coffee preparation is often accused of being a bit nerdy, but what if you lean into that? This book is a deep exploration of coffee brewing from a passionate astrophysicist. With a rigorous approach to coffee you can learn new and surprising things, and this book is having rippling effects on coffee shops and coffee lovers worldwide.
The Physics of Filter Coffee by astrophysicist Jonathan Gagné is perhaps the most significant book ever written on the science of coffee brewing. In the book Jonathan discusses the physics of percolation, extraction, and grinding, as well as water chemistry. He takes the reader down such rabbit holes as pouring-kettle design, optimizing turbulence while pouring, the impact of fines on percolation, the physics of paper filters, and the geometry of various brewers. He also presents some original ideas about coffee brewing and backs it all up with reams of facts and data. The most wonderful thing about The Physics of…
I’ve been working in coffee for nearly 20 years, and teaching people about coffee for most of that. I love sharing how interesting, diverse, and fun the world of coffee is, and I want people to enjoy and value the coffee they drink a little more. It is a passion and a career that’s taken me around the world, and continues to reinforce the idea that just a little effort or interest in your morning coffee has surprisingly large rewards. The books on this list inspired my own passion for coffee and I hope they do the same for you.
It is hard to pick just one of Scott Rao’s books as they have become the industry standard. If you want to learn more about how the best cafes approach coffee brewing, to steal the best bits for your home brewing, then this is a really great place to start.
FROM THE AUTHOR: When I began in the coffee business fourteen years ago, I read every book I could find about coffee. After reading all of those books, however, I felt as if I hadn’t learned much about how to make great coffee. My coffee library was chock-full of colorful descriptions of brewing styles, growing regions, and recipes, with a few almost-unreadable scientific books mixed in. I would have traded in all of those books for one serious, practical book with relevant information about making great coffee in a café. Fourteen years later, I still haven’t found that book. I…
I'm a writer, lecturer, biologist, ecologist, and two-time Fulbright Scholar (to India and Malaysia). I'm now a fiction writer, but basically I’ve always been a storyteller who writes in a historical framework. While I feel an almost compulsive obligation to keep faith with the facts, my main objective is to tell a story—as dramatically and suspensefully and entertainingly as I can. My first non-fiction book, Papyrus: the Plant that Changed the World, tells the story of a plant that still evokes the mysteries of the ancient world while holding the key to the world’s wetlands and atmospheric stability. It changed the world as did all five of the plants on my list below.
The coffee industry dominated and molded the economy, politics, and social structure of entire countries.
Beginning as an Arab medicinal drink for the elite, coffee became the favored modern global stimulant of the blue-collar worker. On the dark side, its monocultural avatar has led to the oppression and land dispossession of indigenous peoples.
In Latin America it created vast wealth next to dire poverty, leading to repressive military dictatorships, revolts, and bloodbaths. And it continues to transform the world today. Welcomed news by the burgeoning world’s drinkers is the finding that coffee consumption can be good for you, reducing the incidence of liver cancer, as well as lowering suicide attempts.
First published in 1999, Uncommon Grounds tells the story of coffee from its discovery on a hill in ancient Abyssinia to the advent of Starbucks and the coffee crisis of the 21st century. Mark Pendergrast uses coffee production, trade, and consumption as a window through which to view broad historical themes: the clash and blending of cultures, slavery, the rise of brand marketing, global inequities, fair trade, revolutions, health scares, environmental issues, and the rediscovery of quality.
As the scope of coffee culture continues to expand,Uncommon Grounds remains more than ever a brilliantly entertaining guide to one of the world's…
I've been going by the handle ‘Dr. Coffee’ online for over a decade now. I really do have a PhD. in coffee! In 2007 I embarked on a doctorate and wrote my thesis on ideas of quality in the coffee industry. The inevitable question is then, ‘what do you do with a PhD in coffee?’ and my answer was to open coffee shops, first in the UK and then in Canada. In recent years, I've switched from owning a coffee shop with books in it to a bookshop with coffee in it, but it still manages to satisfy both passions. I firmly believe there is no better combination than hot coffee and good books.
Another book that served my research well, this one is both compelling, disturbing, and thought-provoking but still compulsively readable. It covers virtually every aspect of coffee’s 500-year history in Europe while also drawing on even older information from coffee-producing countries. The sections that captured my attention most were about the marketing of coffee—fascinating stuff! This book makes it possible to enjoy your favourite drink even more, all the while being aware of its history of exploitation and colonialism and often unsustainable means of production. It will make you seek out ethical, environmentally-friendly coffee without being preachy. Thoroughly worth reading.
Your morning flat-white helped shape the modern world
'Elegantly written, witty and so wide in scope, so rich in detail and so thought provoking' Joanna Blythman
It may seem like just a drink, but coffee's dark journey from the highlands of Ethiopia to the highstreets of every town in the country links alchemy and anthropology, poetry and politics, science and slavery. Plots have been hatched, blood spilled and governments toppled to keep your mug filled with fresh espresso.
In this thought-provoking expose, Antony Wild, coffee trader and historian, explores coffee's dismal colonial past, its perilous corporate present, and the environmental…
