Customer Reviews

The World of Caffeine: The Science and Culture of the World's Most Popular Drug

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"The World of Caffeine: The Science and Culture of the World's Most Popular Drug" is the best book found on the subject. No other book even comes close to the scope of this important topic covered in such magnificent detail! Nearly 400 pages in length encompassing seventeen highly informative chapters separated into five distinct parts, this jewel of nonfiction work by authors Bennett Alan Weinberg and Bonnie K. Bealer is sure to mark it's place in history as the best in its class.

Part I, "Caffeine in History" tells everything you could possibly want to know about this powerful, world's most popular drug, from the Arabian Origins to its refined, almost religious use in Europe, blending into Part II. Part III discusses the role of caffeine from a cultural standpoint and works its way into Part IV, "The Natural History of Caffeine." Of particular interest to me is Part V, "Caffeine and Health," specifically Chapter 15, "Caffeine and the Body," Chapter 16, "Thinking Over Caffeine: Cognition, Learning, and Emotional Well-Being" and Chapter 17, "Caffeine Dependence, Intoxication, and Toxicity." The details of how caffeine permeates every cell in the body are clear, straightforward and very comprehendible. This book was written in a classical narrative style, wonderfully free of slanted opinions and unrelated ramblings in an instructional tone. This is one of the most beautifully arranged and printed hardbounds that I have found, so much that after only a few minutes I had to get my own copy!

It is clear to me now that there are far more benefits to caffeine than detriments. It has been proven to increase alertness, improve concentration and even to help with weight loss, and much more. According to the book, it would take almost 100 cups of coffee to reach toxic blood levels! Even on a day where I crave two or three double lattes, I can now rest easier knowing that I'm far below toxic. But even here the authors make it clear that even after two strong cups of coffee, some of the well-known side effects can take hours to wear off: nervousness, talkativeness and anxiety. It even compares and cross-references other elements of caffeine, a member of the methylxanthine family, to other important naturally occurring compounds such as theophylline and theobromine found in cacao and yerb mate. Absolutely fascinating! The book also has me convinced that I'm hopelessly hooked to caffeine--and not just from coffee!

The message: watch your intake of caffeine levels by knowing how it works in your body and where it orginated, and how other peoples of the world regard its use. No other singular work encompasses the knowledge of the world's preferred drug of choice. There is more than enough information to include as well-founded research of your own, based on the rock solid references, informative notes, beautiful black and white photographs and perfectly placed, highly detailed illustrations. The page layout is practically an art in itself, set in an older typeface reminiscent of a proprietary Garamond. Easy on the eyes, printed on natural (off-white) paper, extremely well edited and a pleasure to read! Beautiful section headers and chapter numbers resembling currency make the book visually appealing. Even the cover makes me want a cup--and a chocolate bar! Logical, no-nonsense flow from chapter to chapter. It is a real treat now to come across a book that lives beyond my expectations as an educated reader. After reading this book, you should have a degree in its own class. Top recommendation for all readers over 13. Buy it today, and don't even think about selling it!

As a physician I found the information in The World of Caffeine both comprehensive and enlightening. I discovered many facts that I will be passing along to my patients who may not realize how much caffeine they are taking in and all the ways in which it may be affecting them. Caffeine has many potential benefits for the mind and body and a few dangers of which people should be aware. Especially sobering are the discussions of possible deleterious effects on children and a serious warning about the unknown dangers of fetal exposure. Incredibly, this is the first serious book ever written about a drug that is used almost universally. If you are going to use a drug, you should know as much about it as possible. I strongly recommend this book to everyone who uses caffeine-- in coffee, tea, colas, or pills-- and that includes almost everyone.

This book rocks! If you drink coffee, tea or cola you need to get
this book. I'm not sure which is more fascinating-- the hundreds of
surprising medical facts about caffeine's effects on the mind and
body, or the astonishing part caffeine has played in culture, art,
religion, society, politics, science and literature.

Caffeine is the
driving force behind the explosion in cafe culture, the drug of the
computer world and the Internet, and necessary part of just about
everybody's daily life. And the authors really know to tell a story
and there are hundreds of great stories from all over the world and
throughout history.

Amazing health facts include that caffeine
actually improves your short term memory and helps you perform certain
mental tasks more quickly and with fewer mistakes. Even more
incredible, that caffeine actually grows new brain cells. The book
also raises some serious warnings about caffeine use in pregnancy, a
risk that has been pretty much overlooked by the FDA.

I would say
that this book gives a unique perspective on understanding history and
modern society as well as offering a wealth of practical information
about how to get the most out of the drug almost all of us are
addicted to.

It also has dozens of illustrations and charts and
wouldn't be a bad gift for the caffeine addict in your life.

Who knew that caffeine had such a fascinating story?

I received a copy of the book as a Christmas present from a family member who knows of my love of the cappuccino, and I must say I was suprised by what Weinberg and Bealer have discovered about the drug. The scientific and medical material is interesting and useful (to pretty much everybody, as apparently most of the world ingests caffeine daily in one form or another), but it was the cultural and social history that I found really engaging. A tiny example: Did you know that Bach wrote a "Coffee Cantata"? Neither did I, and I'm not sure I'll ever have a use for this snippet, but it's good just to know it.

Anyway, I really enjoyed the book and can't imagine a better researched or more interesting treatment of "the world's most popular drug."

This is great reading! Caffeine is so ubiquitous within society that most of us have never really thought about how or why we use it. In this very comprehensive book, the authors detail the history of coffee, tea, and chocolate. This includes their discovery, cultivation, introduction into various societies around the world, impact on society, opposition efforts and medical implications. The book is written in a very evenhanded tone without a noticeably pro-caffeine or anti-caffeine agenda. It is full of absolutely fascinating historical tidbits. Who knew that coffee replaced beer as the morning beverage in the United States, or that the U.S. Government once brought suit against Coca Cola arguing that the caffeine in the soft drink caused bad behavior in adolescent boys? This book may not motivate you to forgo that morning cup of coffee, but you certainly will stare at it with a bit more insight.

Before the advent of caffeine beverages in Europe, which didn't happen until the seventeenth century, what did people drink? That is just one of the many questions answered in this thoroughly informative book about caffeine. Mostly they drank beer. Indeed for breakfast it was typical to have beer soup sopped up with bread. There were no stimulant beverages available, and people did not generally drink water since safe water was not readily available. Such a world it must have been with most people drinking alcoholic beverages from sun up to sun down! Then came first cacao, and then coffee and tea, and our world changed. It is interesting to realize that part of the value of cocoa, coffee and tea is the fact that they are consumed in water that has been boiled. The health benefits of drinking safe water made habitual by the mildly addictive force of caffeine turned out to be a boon to humankind. When one considers the usually deleterious nature of addiction, this is a delicious irony.

The emphasis here of course is on the two most widely consumed caffeine beverages, tea and coffee. Weinberg and Bealer guide us through the facts and the folklore, the history and the pharmacology of the world's favorite drug. They begin with the origins of coffee and tea in Part I: "Caffeine in History," followed by its arrival and widespread use in Europe in Part II: "Europe Wakes Up to Caffeine." Part III is "The Culture of Caffeine" including knowledge about such things as the tea ceremony in Japan, the famous Oxford Coffee Club and the birth of the Royal Society in England and the rise of the coffee houses. The story of Coca-Cola in America and the advent of what the authors call (p. 195) "The Straight Dope: Vavarin, NoDoz, and Other Caffeine Pills," is detailed. The cultural "duality" between coffee and tea is expressed and a two-columned list presented in which, for example, coffee is associated with the male and tea with the female; coffee with indulgence and tea with temperance; coffee with excess and tea with moderation; Americans versus the English, Balzac versus Proust, etc.

I found the last two parts of the book, Part IV: "The Natural History of Caffeine," and Part V: "Caffeine and Health" the most interesting. The chemistry of caffeine is therein discussed and information is given about how much caffeine is in various beverages (Starbucks decaffeinated coffee, for example, was found to actually have 25 mg of caffeine, while an average cup of regular java contains anywhere from 40 to 180 mg). Maté and guarana, caffeine drinks popular in South America, are compared with coffee and tea, as well as with cacao (the source of chocolate), and the cola nut (which is typically chewed), along with the bark of a tree from which something called yoco tea is made. Even betel, khat, ephedra and coca leaves are brought into the discussion. The mental and physical effects of caffeine are assessed as well as that of other methylzanthines found in caffeine plants, such as theobromine and theophylline. Caffeine's effect on memory, depression, aggression, alertness, etc. are looked into, and the question of whether caffeine is a drug of abuse is addressed.

I must say that I found just about everything I wanted to know about caffeine in this book. It is easily the best book on the subject that I know of. The presentation is readable and entertaining with tables, photos, black and white prints, and cartoons augmenting the text. There's even some poetry. One of the most interesting illustrations shows four spider webs spun by spiders each "under the influence" of a different drug, marijuana, benzedrine, chloral hydrate and caffeine. Guess which web is the most distorted?

What we need is a drug that can help people engage each other socially, that can provide mental and physical stimulation and increase creative energy, that is pleasant to ingest, that is cheap enough for almost anyone to use, that does not encourage antisocial behavior or ruin careers or families, and that will never harm the prudent user. Proof that we need such a drug is that ninety percent of the world's population already uses it. The drug is caffeine, and every aspect imaginable of it is covered in _The World of Caffeine: The Science and Culture of the World's Most Popular Drug_ (Routledge) by Bennett Alan Weinberg and Bonnie K. Bealer. If you are at all interested in knowing more about the drug you almost surely use on a daily basis, here's a wealth of information for you.

For instance, why is it that so many plants make caffeine? There's coffee, of course, and tea, and cocoa. Then there's cola nut, maté, and guarana, and yoco, and others you have probably never heard of and which have no commercial value. Caffeine within a plant possesses capacity to kill harmful fungi and bacteria. It can kill weeds around the plant, and bother insects. Pure caffeine is so dangerous to humans that labs which make it have to have ventilation and mask and glove their workers. It is possible to kill yourself with caffeine, but it isn't easy. Drinking a hundred espressos quickly might do it, but getting all that liquid down might present a little difficulty. This dangerous a drug ought to cause some real problems, but other than sleep disturbance, it is really quite seldom that anyone has a difficulty with caffeine. In truth, there have been countless studies of what caffeine does to the body, and virtually no ill effects can be traced to it. We may have made a terrible choice in our other legal mind altering drugs, tobacco and alcohol, but we picked a pretty safe one in caffeine.

Caffeine must do us plenty of good if it is so prevalent, and studies show that it is in many ways a "smart pill" that can help in intellectual effort. This seems to be at least partially independent of its capacity to simply increase alertness. Rather startlingly, it has been shown to make the branches of nerve cells in the brain longer and more numerous, so that there is more potential for the neurons to interconnect. Caffeine is thus the only known substance that augments brain function by changing the brain's physical structure. It may be that governments don't like the idea of caffeine-fired people thinking political thoughts; many governments have made coffeehouses illegal.

History, chemistry, physiology, and economics are tied together in this big, well-illustrated tribute to the world's only unregulated, unlicensed, addictive drug that is available everywhere. Good reading for all addicts.

This book is one-sided in it's approach to the benefits/costs of caffeine use. I would definately agree that it's probably better to drink coffee than to crash your car, or have an industrial accident of some kind. I'd also say that most of the benefits that are discussed in this book are short-term. I believe that the costs are cumulative, and long-term.
The authors take great pains to point out that any negative effects of caffeine are dose-dependent. I'd agree that anyone could use 10mg of caffeine per day without any significant negative effects. Who doesn't increase their dosage over time though?
They talk about how much caffeine one would have to consume in order to have a toxcicity reaction. Caffeine does have negative (as well as positive) effects well below toxic dosages. They also make the patently false claim that the caffeine analogs found in tea, chocolate, guarana etc. have exactly the same neurological effects. These caffeine analogs are chemical cousins, but they aren't chemically identical, and they have different neurological effects. Doctors sometimes prescribe theopyline (tea caffeine) to asthmatics.
Caffeine is not the only biologically active substance in coffee. There is an antioxidant in coffee (that's good). However this antioxidant evaporates after about 20 minutes, so drink your coffee fast. Caffeine itself is not an antioxidant (as the authors falsely claim).
All of the lab studies relating to the effects of caffeine have used pure caffeine (not coffee). There are over 50 differen't alkaloids in coffee (including caffeine). Several of the alkaloids in coffee are known neurotoxins. There is also one alkaloid that has been found to powerfully alter cholesterol levels (although there is more of this chemical in coffee that hasn't been paper-filtered).
Caffeine has been proven to compound the effects of a stressful situation. Studies have shown that the same stessful situation on caffeine will cause a much greater increase in both bloodpressure and heartrate. These effects increase rather than decrease over time. It may be that people become accustomed to higher and higher stress levels. This may be proven biologically to to be the result of a gradual increase in cortisol (stress hormone) levels, and a corresponding lowering of DHEA (youth hormone) levels over time. Caffeine's main action is that it interferes with the normal metabolism of GABA. GABA is the brain's natural sedative. It subsequently affects noradrenaline, insulin, and melatonin levels. If you take the drug Xanax, then you are probably compensating for caffeine consumption.
I'm not going to list all of the references to research. There are plenty of books, and articles that do this. I suggest reading "Caffeine Blues: Wake Up to the Hidden Dangers of America's #1 Drug" by Stephen Cherniske. The major problem that I have with "The World of Caffeine: The Science and Culture of the World's Most Popular Drug" is that it's like the religion of caffeine. People (especially caffeine-dependent lab-bound researchers) want to believe that there are no negative effects related to their favorite substance. I also think that the drug companies may make alot of money selling drugs that attempt to compensate for the negative effects of caffeine.
I would like to suggest that anyone with stress-related disorders like anxiety, depression, or insomnia try quitting all forms of caffeine for at least 6 weeks. It takes weeks for neuroendocrine hormones to balance out. It also takes 12 hours for caffeine to be detoxified by the liver. I can almost guarantee that you will feel less stressed-out if you can tough out the hedaches and drowsiness for awhile. You might also try very gradually decreasing your caffeine dosage (to avoid the withdrawl symptoms). Try gradually blending in more decaf coffee with regular (if that's the way you get your caffeine). DHEA supplementation might be useful. I don't personally take DHEA supplements. I use some natural methods to raise my DHEA levels. If you want to learn more about DHEA, then read "The DHEA Breakthrough" by Stephen A. Cherniske. I also suggest checking out PubMed for information on Caffeine, or any other substance.

Popular treatments of scientific and botanical subjects have been selling well over the past few years (Secret Life of Plants, Nathaniel's Nutmeg, Longitude, Fermat's Last Theorem, etc.), and this hugely interesting and beautifully written book goes some way to explaining why. Caffeine is the global drug, used in a multitude of forms by just about every society, but non-specialist consumers really know very little about the substance. The "science and culture" of caffeine - the story of how and why it achieved its prominence in our diet and its place in our lives - makes fascinating reading, and the illustrations are extremely well chosen. This will remain the standard work on the subject for very many years.

This book is a very interesting, well written and thoroughly researched work. It is extremely informative and reads in a style that is engaging while still maintaining a scholarly level.
I would recommend the book to all who wish to learn nearly everything there is to know about caffeine.
It is apparently the authors' debut work and, as such it is even more impressive. Bravo!