The coffee book

A freshly updated edition of the best introduction to one of the world's most popular products, The Coffee Book is jammed full of facts, figures, cartoons, and commentary. It explores the process of cultivation from crop to cup, surveys the social history of café society from the first Turkish coffeehouses to beatnik havens in Berkeley and Greenwich Village, and examines the industry's major players, revealing how they turned a much-loved product into a commodity, ruining the lives of millions of farmers around the world. Luttinger and Dicum detail the rise of the specialty coffee industry, including the Starbucks phenomenon, while considering the exploitation of labor, damage to the environment, and reduction in the quality of the bean that mass cultivation causes. - Back cover.