Rating: 
Summary: A bit tedious and more
Review: A staple of our breakfast table, our breaks at work, after dinner, and for a pick me up all during the day coffee is something that we think about the cup in front of us, but rarely do we think of how we got here. Pendergast delves into this mix, taking us back to the coffee cradle of Ethopia and on up to the Starbucks wars of the present day. He has crafted a very readable and accessible story of the history of coffee, as an economic and social driving force. The reader is given a real overview of how this dark, sometimes bitter brew has woven itself into the fabric of our lives, from the match heated cups in the trenches of the World Wars to the lines forming outside your neighborhood coffee house today. But Pendergast looks at both sides of the story - the consumers and the coffee companies, but also the suppliers and the lives of those who make their (meager) livelihood off of harvesting the coffee bean. He nicely contrasts the Americans up in arms because of coffee rising past $1 a pound, while that $1 is more than a day's wage for many of the coffee harvesters. Coffee does not just appear on the grocery shelf, or in our cup by magic, it takes many steps on teh way, and these have impact upon costs, and upon the lives of those doing the work. While personally I think that the book slows down heavily in the final chapters, overall I found it kept me engaged, with broad topics broken down in short subjects helping to keep the focus and the players straight. Coffee has been the boon and the bane of society for the past few hundred years. I found that I also came away with a greater understanding of the types of coffee, and what to be looking for when I'm buying it to get a better quality. Arabica, Robusta, and others now mean something more to me, and that's the beauty of a book like this - the information you receive appears on so many levels. I tip my cup to Mr. Pendergast.
Rating: 
Summary: now it is 3 degrees of separation not 6
Review: Everything we do, everything we buy has an impact far around the world. This is an excellent study of these links through an in depth review of the coffee industry. Pendergrast has researched the significant political, business, and economic history of the industry and its role in the US relationship with Latin American, African and Asian coffee producing countries. The information is academic quality but throughoughly readible.
Pendergrast certainly would not ask us to give up this amazing drink, but the book does help to lift the veil of ignorance surrounding the impact our decision has and our role and responsibility in the economic process called the "invisible hand" of capitalism.
The book is a bit heavy on the marketing history of the industry, but to business people or economists this is a one of its strongest aspects. It is also important to understand the history of coffee consumption in the US (and has implications for other products we buy.) Quite simply, Americans bought crappy coffee just because of the advertising and brand strategy. It is amazing to me how much longer it took Americans to realize the potential for much better tasting coffee. It does give hope to all entrepreneurs, because this seems so obvious to us post-Starbucks, but it is only very recently that gourmet coffee companies figured out that we might want something with flavor.
If there are broader lessons from this book, it is to re-examine what we buy. What do we buy that is just good marketing and yet is an inferior product in some way. I like to believe that most Americans would not want to buy products that are made with slave or child labor or with environmental practices that are killing people in another country. Obviously the real world is not so black and white, but I think the same principle applies to everything we buy. Ideally, we will continue to evolve as a society and consider these factors when we choose our coffee. It is the beauty and potential of our economic system that we CAN push Starbucks and other companies in that direction just buy what we choose at the coffee cart or in the grocery aisle.
Rating: 
Summary: Strong brew!
Review: In Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World, Mark Pendergrast traces the commercial, political, and social impact of the bean from its mythical discovery by an Ethiopian goatherd named Kaldi to its modern vacuum-packed ubiquity. Pendergrast does best when describing the coffee-drinking habits of populations around the world down through history. Also of great interest are the sections illustrating the impetus that the coffee trade provided empire-building nations during the age of colonialism. Some of the strongest sections of the book deal with the role of the coffee trade in Cold War and contemporary U.S. foreign policy. Pendergrast also devotes ample attention to the social and environmental effects of the cultivation of coffee in the countries where it is grown. The text only lags a bit, however, during the long accounts of relatively mundane business maneuvers by various U.S. companies attempting to gain market supremacy. There is a useful appendix illustrating how to brew "the perfect cup" of coffee.
Rating:
Summary: Coffee makes the world go 'round
Review: It's not everyday you find a five hundred page book on the history of coffee. But then again, most coffee fans take their jobs quite seriously. Author Mark Pendergast has chronicled ups and downs of this remarkable commodity on an unprecedented scale. He takes us from the discovery of the bean in the hills of Ethiopia all the way to the despicable excesses of Starbucks. The first few chapters of this book take us on a jaunty trip through coffee's early history, including the ruthless and colorful European traders who were responsible for introducing the Western world to the bizarre beverage. Pendergast, a businessman by education, then settles into a wonderfully readable economic history. The structure of the material centers on the companies and international agreements that make up the international coffee system. But unlike so many commercially-oriented histories, Uncommon Grounds is eminently readable and captivating. The characters in the saga are fascinating: from American industrialists to Latin American peasants to African warlords to European consumers, there are people involved in this story, not just money. If you have a yen for coffee, grab an espresso and read this book. You won't find weighty theories on how coffee forms the basis of all human history, rather a fun, a caffeine-inspired trip through modernity with java-tinted glasses. -- HistoryHouse.com
Rating:
Summary: Good to the last page
Review: Now if you ask me, and quite a few caffeine addicts do quite regularly, then this book is definitely worth considering if you are looking for a book on the history of the coffee industry. If you want a coffee table book, then get one of them books with pictures of The Rocky Mountains or Hawaii or Washington D.C. or some such. It ought to be obvious to anybody looking at this book in a book shop that it ain't a coffee table book because it is full of words, not full of pictures. However, I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you are inevitably looking at a computer screen and don't have the ability to reach out and pick up the book and thumb through it like I do, seeing as I already done purchased a copy.
I wanted a book about the history of the coffee industry and consumer practices and, boy howdy, that's what this book is. No need to offer back handed complements because I was surprised by the content or expected something I didn't get. Kind of like when the twins come home from school all in tears because they done got Valentines Day cards from some of their play friends at school and the inside of the cards had been doctored up to read in a humorous, mean sort of way. No it ain't like that. I reckon the author is pretty straight forward in presenting what the book is and what he writes about and if you were fool enough to buy the book thinking it was a coffee table book because it had the word coffee in the title, then the fault is yorn, partner.
I read this through without puttin it down (because I was on an airplane) and then I handed it to Mama and she skimmed it and said it was inerstin' and all, but she couldn't read it. I thought it was about the best thing I had read in a coon's age... but to each his own, or her own.
Rating:
Summary: Excelent
Review: Ok, I admitt that if you do know about coffee you'll probably find it somewhat incomplete, specially in the terms of how to get a great cup of it. However, what makes this book great is the fact that it clearly states the way coffee had an influence in the world and how coffee was influenced by different historical events. This book is not about coffee, but as the title states, it is about the influence of masses and advertizing over a product, as well as the influence of a product in the shaping of society.
This book won't specify a lot about the plant or the drink in itself, but rather as it was brought to it's consumers and how separated is the origin from the end user of an agricultural product. It will help you understand more about economics than about coffee, yet it is not a bad book. If you like to know how different products or scientifical theories influenced the world and helped shape society, then this is a must read. If you want to know a lot about coffee and all of it's subtleties, then, this is not your book.
Rating:
Summary: If you have to find the ONE book that covers Coffee..
Review: Pendergrast has it covered here in Uncommon Grounds.. From Kaldi to Peet's and Starbucks.. He manages to give you the complete historical perspective of coffee from when it was first grown in Africa and South America.. He goes into great length about the trade aspects of coffee, how it's become such an important staple of American life. I personally enjoyed the chapters on the history of American coffee advertising which went WAY beyond the "good to the last drop" story I'd heard regarding Theodor Roosevelt (said after drinking a cup of Maxwell House). If you or anyone you know, is a coffee lover, this is certainly a must-have book. I don't consider myself a coffee junky,(though I do like good coffee) and this was a really interresting & eye opening read.
Rating: 
Summary: Like Instant Coffee - Dry and Flavorless
Review: The subtitle of this book is: The History of Coffee and How it Transformed Our World. I thought I was getting into a book about the role of coffee in the waves and trends of world history. However, Prendergast almost entirely ignores the rest of the world (while repeatedly remarking how Europeans drink more coffee than Americans) and writes, instead a literature review of coffee industry publications, going into tedious detail of the advertising wars between coffee companies in the late 19th and early 20th century. Occasionally, the author finds himself remarking about how coffee consumption in the industrialized world helped institutionalize atrocious poverty in coffee-growing countries, but then eschews considered analysis in order to get back to the oh-so-enthralling decades-long battle between Maxwell House and Hills Brothers for market share. Prendergast repeatedly refers to how Americans' taste for coffee is, objectively, poor - one feels he does this as compensation for what he knows is a weak narrative. If you are looking for a book which considers the 'world' as 95% America and chapters full of quotes from fin de siecle coffee advertisements, you've found the right one. If you are looking for a careful anaylsis of how coffee has changed the world, you'll need to keep looking.
Rating:
Summary: Like Instant Coffee - Dry and Flavorless
Review: The subtitle of this book is: The History of Coffee and How it Transformed Our World. I thought I was getting into a book about the role of coffee in the waves and trends of world history. However, Prendergast almost entirely ignores the rest of the world (while repeatedly remarking how Europeans drink more coffee than Americans) and writes, instead a literature review of coffee industry publications, going into tedious detail of the advertising wars between coffee companies in the late 19th and early 20th century. Occasionally, the author finds himself remarking about how coffee consumption in the industrialized world helped institutionalize atrocious poverty in coffee-growing countries, but then eschews considered analysis in order to get back to the oh-so-enthralling decades-long battle between Maxwell House and Hills Brothers for market share. Prendergast repeatedly refers to how Americans' taste for coffee is, objectively, poor - one feels he does this as compensation for what he knows is a weak narrative. If you are looking for a book which considers the 'world' as 95% America and chapters full of quotes from fin de siecle coffee advertisements, you've found the right one. If you are looking for a careful anaylsis of how coffee has changed the world, you'll need to keep looking.
Rating:
Summary: Decent book
Review: This book is about coffee. Obvious, right? Yet, it is also about the larger world out there. Our kind author isn't just using coffee as a metaphor, but instead uses Coffee as the proverbial "tip of the iceberg" as a way to talk about larger historical, political and social issues in a way that is palatable to the average reader. Coffee has had a major impact on the United States, from our very beginnings in the Boston Tea Party to our present day position in the land of 24-hour a day television, which of course really means 24 hours a day of advertising. How has this affected our place in the world? Americans drink a lot of coffee to get a quick pick me up. And that mood enhancing aspect is also included in similar products... those similar products include Cola, Tea, and all sorts of tricked out street drugs designed to make us feel better about who or what we are. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing really isn't important to the discussion at this level, just that we are aware of it. Coffee has also affected our political dealing with the rest of the world, be it our weird love-hate relationship with South and Central America as a source of coffee, and more currently various illegal drugs. If we weren't buying it they wouldn't be selling it to us. It has also entered into all kinds of health topics and considerations. Coffee has had a major social and political impact on the Untied States. We use it, and similar products and drugs for various reasons. We threaten political and military consequenences to those who have provided us those things. The "pick me up" aspect makes possible a longer workday for workers in modern society... and this can have productivity increases for companies and people. The advertising methods, those in many ways were invented to "push" coffee are everywhere in our social framework. And we haven't gotten to coffee's health affects. Is coffee good for you? A simple question that doctors is still trying to properly answer. It has some kind of health impact on our people, but what and how and why are still, in many ways, to be answered. There is a lot to be said, and my rambling review gives an idea of the many topics this most excellent book covers. But most importantly, the author tells one how to brew a good cup of coffee.
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