Customer Reviews

Coffee: A Dark History

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Library Journal
Wild (The East India Company) has been widely recognized for introducing specialty coffees to Great Britain. Here, he presents a 500-year history of the much-loved drink, drawing on science, politics, anthropology, and alchemy before concluding that today's large companies, with their demand for lower prices, have put coffee farmers out of business and thousands of workers out of jobs in Africa and Central America. Wild's explanation of how major corporations have taken over the coffee industry, supported by public information direct from the coffee distributors themselves, will inspire readers to comtemplate their contribution to this global situation. The only comparison would be Stewart Lee Allen's The Devil's Cup, which describes similar facts but from the first person. With its political and historical perspectives, this book reads more like a textbook. Recommended for academic libraries; an optional purchase for others.-Jennifer A. Wickes, Suite101.com, Pine Beach, NJ Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

I recommend that you peruse the pages of this book at your local library or book store prior to purchasing. The author has compiled 308 pages of supposed facts, ideas, opinions, and "objective illumination." No doubt some of the data provided is true and the first 83 pages engross the reader to the beginning of the history of coffee. Unfortunately the narrative then seems to fall apart not because the information may be false or questionable, but rather the author goes off on tangents which seem to simply fill up the pages. Is Rimbaud's influence on Bob Dylan and Patti Smith necessary in the discussion of coffee?

There comes a point when the reader realizes that the author's writing is more of free flow of thoughts and assumed facts. Add to this the lack of citations and notes (which the author fully acknowledges) and the book becomes a jumble of many figures, dates, places and people that lacks organization.

Apparently "Coffee: A Dark History" was written by a man who didn't take his mother's advice and may actually have believed everything he read. Speculation, legends, myths, semi-documented accounts, and a smattering of facts all seem to be given equal weight in this book.

One gets the feeling that the author wants to believe that coffee use goes back to antiquity, even though he tells you he can't provide any evidence of that. More than once there is a vague reference to the Biblical "forbidden tree of knowledge" which could have been...coffee! In fact, any time a dark beverage is mentioned in any ancient writings it might have been...coffee! (Though a reading of the context usually indicates that it was not.)

The book presents material such as the discredited German study from the early 90's which claimed an analysis of the hair of 3000 year old Egyptian mummies contained cocaine and nicotine (but not caffeine). There is no scientific or historical support suggesting the ancient Egyptians had access to New World plants like coca or tobacco, but the total absence of caffeine fails (once again) to prove the ancient world drank coffee. There is no reason to even give it a one line mention in the book. Elsewhere there is mention of Islamic Arabs in the 5th century, although Mohamed wasn't born until the 6th century.

When so many of the author's "facts" are in error, it's hard to know when he may have gotten something right. (Even an blind pig finds the occasional truffle, right?) If you really want to know something about the history of coffee, consult at least two other books after reading this one.

To add insult to injury, it's not even a lively or entertaining read. Not recommended.

There are some excellent books about coffee and its history. Some books about its politics and some about the business it engenders. Most of non technical coffee books tend to be a little biased against the rich world. This one is no exception.
Poor world producers and rich world consumers are the two sides of the same coin and as a matter of fact, unregulated, this market tends to behave like any other market: supply and demand drives it.
The fact is that Vietnam entered the Market «en force» in the nineties and suddenly the coffee world changed. Supply shot up overnight and demand, although it increased did not set up the supply surge. Thus, prices went down.
For those who know the coffee market, boom and bust is the rule. A surge in price would trigger a surge in production as new land would be put to use for coffee growing thus generating a supply bubble. Therefore, prices would fall, land would be set aside for other uses and people would go out of business. With or without ICO that has been the rule throughout the XXth century.
The thing is that coffee works in five years cycle, that is the normal time for a coffee tree to grow to mature production, and therefore to yield new coffee on the market until there is too much. These cycles are extremely difficult to anticipate - those who would do it would be billionaires - and are subject to hazards like frost or markets busts.
But the nineties also saw the coming of age of specialty coffees and the glorification of the Arabica kind. Suddenly, Blue Mountain or Kona coffees would fetch stratospheric prices.
Another piece of the puzzle is that coffee distribution is one of the most elaborated and financially demanding businesses, conducing to a huge concentration of the market. It therefore appears as if big corporation was after poor people profits.
This is a market where no evident truths are forthcoming and the most useless thing to do is to blame the rich, amongst which the inevitable US of A.
That Vietnam wanted to have a try on cash crop production is not the fault of Capitol Hill, and that they were hugely successful still less.
I think this book which enlightens some aspects of the coffee trade is trying to find culprits but offers no solutions. In ten years time, when the trend will have reversed and back again, Whose fault will it be?

I should have had questions when the reviews on the back cover are from newspapers that I never heard of or can can not find the reviews on the internet.

The book is a series of dark attacks on the major coffee distributors, with not any attacks backed up by any documentation. If an attack is to be credible, the author should be sure to cite the source.

For example: on page 9, he makes the claim that 14 Mexican coffee workers were found dead in Arizona because the coffee growers in Chiapas could not get a good price for their coffee beans is quite a flight of fancy and should definitely state the source of this fact.

Also of note on the flyleaf he claims to have introduced specialty coffees in the U.K. This should indicate that the report that he gives contains a bias against his competition.

The book is very disorganized and he can not seem to stay on the subject.

Antony Wild's (2004) book is The Good Tea and Coffee Company book of the month for January 2007.

At the outset, it claims to be a 'dark' history and it certainly doesn't disappoint in that respect.

Though sounding a little extravagant in portraying coffee as the 'forbidden fruit' in the Garden of Eden of the Old Testament, each chapter touches on sensitive ethical issues which are moving ever higher on the priority list of European consumers.

Tracing the origins of the cultivation of coffee back to the Yemen and the early attempts to create plantations elsewhere by The East India Company, we are taken on a journey of unexpected complexity as coffee finds its way into the social and religeous infrastracture of every continent it touches.

By the end of the book, we've had a lot more for our money than simply history. Antony Wild makes us look anew at something we have grown up with and almost taken for granted. He gives us the tools we need to think again about coffee - to bring it out of the darkness.. and into the light.

This is my first introduction to anything about coffee's history and how coffee affects the global market and economy. I am simply a person who likes my morning joe and an occasional coffee house treat! I found the history part of this book fascinating. However, was taken a-back by Wild's strong anti-US feelings about the USA's treatment of Central and South American countries. His treatment seems biased--still, the reader needs to remember that he's a Brit living in France. Overall, a good read.

Anthony Wild takes us through the velvet history of the darkest of drinks,
touching on biology, culture, slavery, exploitation, Napoleon, St. Helena,
Rimbaud, Starbucks and whether or not Balzac really drank 60 cups a day.
From obscure origins to mass consumption, Wild roasts an aromatic tale. Recommended.

'Coffee A Dark History' by Anthony Wild makes an interesting tale. It takes the reader on a fascinating journey through the past half-millennium as the author loosely tracks how an obscure plant from the highlands of Ethiopia became a global institution.

Indeed, Mr Wild's story is often somewhat less than the titular beverage and more about the historic events and political and cultural personalities that the coffee bean touches during its travel through time. Following the exhibition of China's green teas by her Great Fleet's visit to Arabia in the 14th century, the book suggests that coffee was "discovered" by Sufi missionaries as an alternative stimulant brew in the mountains of Ethiopia. Did you know that the locals there infused the leaf of the coffee plant into a mildly stimulating drink?

From these very humble origins, we are invited on an interesting journey as 'Coffee A Dark History' follows the roasted bean first to Yemen of old and then via the Ottoman empire to Europe where its surging popularity saw the growth of coffee transplanted across the globe with the spread of colonialism. Mr Wild takes us on numerous, interesting tangents along the way. We visit Boston at the time of the historic 'tea party' and St Helena for the exiled years of Napoleon. He tackles the subject of slavery and how he feels that this source of labour was central to coffee plantations becoming established in the colonies of Europe's great powers of the 17th and 18th centuries.

In more contemporary times, the book tells how instant coffee was created as a convenient easy drink for soldiers - first in the Great War and then, more significantly, in World War Two. He also saves space to define the economic plight of modern coffee growers and the concept of Fair Trade.

I would recommend "Coffee A Dark History". If you are after a book that tracks the history of the coffee beverage with blinkered vision, then probably stay away - it is not for you. However, for the history buff - who happens to like the odd espresso or cappuccino and is interested in a slightly offbeat tale of how their favourite beverage interacted with the chronicles of history, then this may well be a book worth considering.

On a final note, I'd like to offer a personal thanks to Mr Wild for introducing me to the concept of roasting one's own coffee beans. It is a notion I had never considered until reading his book and it has revolutionized my coffee consumption at home. I never realized that freshly-roasted coffee could offer so much more taste!

This is at my local coffee shop and I read some of it everytime I have coffee. Overall, it is fascinating and well written. Wonderful to know more about my dailey brew.