The Devil's Cup: A History of the World According to Coffee

by Stewart Lee Allen

Book Overview

"Absolutely riveting . . . Essential reading for foodies, java-junkies, anthropologists, and anyone else interested in funny, sardonically told adventure stories."--Anthony Bourdain, author of Kitchen... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345441494
• ISBN13: 9780345441492
• Release Date: March 2003
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.6" x 5.4"

Customer Reviews

Enchanting, humorous, and addicting

I'm a huge fan of the food-history-travelogue style of writing, and this book satisfied my craving quite nicely. I found myself accelerating my reading to see what would happen next, as the author travels the world in search of various historical brews. From Africa to the Middle East to Europe and beyond, you feel like you're right there, experiencing the bustle of busy marketplaces and the chatter of a Viennese cafe. It's written in an amusing prose and presents an array of intruiging tidbits of historical evidence. As I sipped my coffee along-side the book, I couldn't help but experiment and day-dream of whether the brew tasted even remotely similar just a few hundred years ago, although I found myself (unfortunately?) short on ambergris. It's not often that I read a book in just about one sitting, but I was hooked as soon as I started reading.

Great read, more travelogue than history

This is a quick and enjoyable book. Although I actually did learn quite a bit about an interesting subject, the book is as much of a travel story as it is the history of a foodstuff that has only become ubiquitous during the last several centuries.I suspect that the search for the roots of coffee is just an excuse for a jaunt around the world, from the rain forests of Africa, to the bleakest coast of the Arabian peninsula, to an art scam in India, across the Atlantic in a tramp steamer and finally a road trip across America. Well, actually, that's a bit of a simplification--I missed a couple of continents.It is an entertaining book. The author has a wry sense of humor and is an astute observer of human diversity. He's also something of a free spirit, and I have to wonder if his being stopped by Southern Patrolmen looking for drugs came as more of a surprise to him than to the reader. The book really does operate at two levels, providing an interesting and informative story about the history of coffee, viewing it through contemporary eyes in the many locations where coffee made its way through history, eventually culminating in Starbucks. Looking for the perfect cuppa joe? Sounds like a good story. Yeah. We can have some fun with that. Ask the barista for another latte grande and enjoy.

Stimulating reading

Author Stewart Lee Allen takes a wild romp through remote parts of the world in chase of the perfect cup of joe. From Yemen, Ethiopia, to Calcutta and Mysore, to Turkey, Europe, Brazil and finally the US, he takes us on a wild adventure. He proposes that Europe woke from being a backwater with a six-pack a day ale habit when coffee became the drink of choice. Did coffee alter history as well as grumpy morning moods? Well, the American colonists dumped their tea in Boston Harbor, brewed up a cup of caw-fee, and a successful revolution was underway shortly thereafter.There is a lot about coffee in this book I sure didn't know (like related drinks made of the leaves and cherry husks, monkey dropping coffee and more.) The writing is funny, funny stuff, a lot like Bill Bryson. I recommend this book highly.

This book is as sweet as coffee itself

Believe it or not while I was reading this book I was completely transfered into another world,into another time.Thanks to the writers talent I was enjoying being there and learn the story of coffee and so many others things.I have tried my best to read this book as slowly as I could but that was impossible as I have finished it just in one day.God,it was such a pleasant read and that was amazing because I found it hard to believe that there is a non-fiction book to be finished just in a few hours. Reading this book is magic - Having this book in your bookshelf is having an expensive souvenir and you must know that if this book weights 200 grams is worth 200 billion dollars! Because it is a story of something that is part of the life and that's of course COFFEE that we use three or more times a day. Isn't it a shame to drink Coffee and not knowing its history???

ssss

This is a real book with a story and plot - in a way it reminded me of that book on Longtitude by Dava Sobel because they both are "history" books about an obscure topic that read like a novel with characters. The difference is that the main character here is the writer who does these wild things in his efforts to understand how coffee changed history and uses them to show us how it did so. It reads the way the first cup of the day feels, all excited and rushing and sort of eurphoric. My only complaint is that at times it moves so fast that its sort of dizzying. Overall, a great job.