Coffee: A Comprehensive Guide to the Bean, the Beverage, and the Industry offers a definitive guide to the many rich dimensions of the bean and the beverage around the world. Leading experts from business and academia consider coffee’s history, global spread, cultivation, preparation, marketing, and the environmental and social issues surrounding it today. They discuss, for example, the impact of globalization; the many definitions of organic, direct trade, and fair trade; the health of female farmers; the relationships among shade, birds, and coffee; roasting as an art and a science; and where profits are made in the commodity chain. Drawing on interviews and the lives of people working in the business—from pickers and roasters to coffee bar owners and consumers—this book brings a compelling human side to the story.

The authors avoid romanticizing or demonizing any group in the business. They consider basic but widely misunderstood issues such as who adds value to the bean, the constraints of peasant life, and the impact of climate change. Moving beyond simple answers, they represent various participants in the supply chain and a range of opinions about problems and suggested solutions in the industry. Coffee offers a multidimensional examination of a deceptively everyday but extremely complex commodity that remains at the center of many millions of lives. Tracing coffee’s journey from field to cup, this handbook to one of the world’s favorite beverages is an essential guide for professionals, coffee lovers, and students alike.

Contributions by: Sarah Allen, Jonathan D. Baker, Peter S. Baker, Jonathan Wesley Bell, Clare Benfield, H. C. "Skip" Bittenbender, Connie Blumhardt, Willem Boot, Carlos H. J. Brando, August Burns, Luis Alberto Cuéllar, Olga Cuellar, Kenneth Davids, Jim Fadden, Elijah K. Gichuru, Jeremy Haggar, Andrew Hetzel, George Howell, Juliana Jaramillo, Phyllis Johnson, Lawrence W. Jones, Alf Kramer, Ted Lingle, Stuart McCook, Michelle Craig McDonald, Sunalini Menon, Jonathan Morris, Joan Obra, Price Peterson, Rick Peyser, Sergii Reminny, Paul Rice, Robert Rice, Carlos Saenz, Vincenzo Sandalj, Jinap Selamat, Colin Smith, Shawn Steiman, Robert W. Thurston, Steven Topik, Tatsushi Ueshima, Camilla C. Valeur, Geoff Watts, and Britta Zeitemann

Authors:

Robert W. Thurston is Phillip R. Shriver Professor of History at Miami University. Jonathan Morris is research professor of modern European history at the University of Hertfordshire. Shawn Steiman is owner of Coffea Consulting, Honolulu, Hawai‘i.

Contents:

Introduction
Robert W. Thurston
Part I: The Coffee Business
1 Strategies for Improving Coffee Quality
Price Peterson
2 The Coffee Plant and How It Is Handled
Shawn Steiman
3 Digging Deeper: Cultivation and Yields
H. C. "Skip" Bittenbender
4 Coffee as a Global System
Peter S. Baker
5 What Does “Organic” Mean?
Robert W. Thurston
6 Coffee under Threat: The Growing Problem of the Coffee Berry Borer
Juliana Jaramillo
7 Culture, Agriculture, and Nature: Shade Coffee Farms and Biodiversity
Robert Rice
8 A Guatemalan Coffee Farmer’s Story: A Challenging Life in a Beautiful, Harsh Land
Carlos Saenz
9 Pickers
Robert W. Thurston
10 Coffee Processing: An Artisan`s Perspective
Joan Obra
11 Women in Coffee in Colombia
Olga Cuellar
12 How a Country Girl from Arkansas Became an Importer Leading Other Women in Coffee
Phyllis Johnson
13 The Role of Nonprofits in Coffee
August Burns
14 Hunger in the Coffee Lands
Rick Peyser
15 The “Price” of Coffee: How the Coffee Commodity Market Works
Robert W. Thurston
16 Appreciating Quality: The Route to Upward Mobility for Coffee Farmers
George Howell
17 What is Specialty Coffee?
Shawn Steiman
18 Where Does the Money Go in the Coffee Supply Chain?
Robert W. Thurston
Part II: The State of the Trade
19 The Global Trade in Coffee: An Overview
Robert W. Thurston
20 Coffee Certification Programs
Robert W. Thurston
21 Direct Trade in Coffee
Geoff Watts
22 Fair Trade: Still a Big Plus for Farmers and Workers around the World
Paul Rice
Producer Country Profiles
23 Hawaii
Shawn Steiman
24 India
Sunalini Menon
25 Indonesia
Jinap Selamat
26 Colombia
Luis Alberto Cuéllar
27 Ethiopia
Willem Boot
28 Vietnam
Robert W. Thurston
29 Brazil
Carlos H. J. Brando
30 Supporting Coffee Farmers’ Response to Market Changes
Jeremy Haggar
Consumer Country Profiles
31 Introduction to Consumer Countries
Jonathan Morris
32 Denmark
Camilla C. Valeur
33 France
Jonathan Wesley Bell
34 Italy
Vincenzo Sandalj
35 United Kingdom
Clare Benfield
36 Russia
Robert W. Thurston
37 Ukraine
Sergii Reminny with Jonathan Morris
38 Japan
Tatsushi Ueshima
39 Germany
Britta Zeitemann
40 United States
Robert W. Thurston
Part III: The History of Coffee and Its Social Life
41 Coffee, a Condensed History
Jonathan Morris with material from Robert W. Thurston
42 Coffee House Formats through the Centuries: Third Places or Public Spaces?
Jonathan Morris
43 Why Americans Drink Coffee: The Boston Tea Party or Brazilian Slavery?
Steven Topik and Michelle Craig McDonald
44 The Ecology of Taste: Robusta Coffee and the Limits of the Specialty Revolution
Stuart McCook
45 The Espresso Menu: A History
Jonathan Morris
46 The Competing Languages of Coffee: Signs, Narratives, and Symbols of American Specialty Coffee
Kenneth Davids
Part IV: The Qualities of Coffee
47 Coffee Quality
Geoff Watts
48 Why Does Coffee Taste That Way? Notes from the Field
Shawn Steiman
49 Coffee Quality and Assessment
Shawn Steiman
50 Distinctive Drinking: Specialty Coffee and Class in the United States
Jonathan D. Baker
51 Brewing: Dissolving the Puzzle
Andrew Hetzel
52 Roasting: Developing Flavor in the Bean
Colin Smith
53 Roasting Culture
Connie Blumhardt and Jim Fadden
54 Barista Culture
Sarah Allen
55 Brewing Culture
Alf Kramer
Coffee and Health
56 The Long Debate over Coffee and Health
Robert W. Thurston
57 Caffeine: How Much Is in Your Cup, and How Much Is Bad for You?
Robert W. Thurston
58 Recent Research on Coffee and Health
Lawrence W. Jones
Part V: The Future of Coffee
59 Coffee Research in Kenya: Current Status and Future Perspectives
Elijah K. Gichuru
60 Genetically Modified (Transgenic) Coffee
Robert W. Thurston
61 Mechanization
Robert W. Thurston
62 A Life in Coffee
Ted Lingle
63 How to Make a Great Cup of Coffee
Robert W. Thurston with Shawn Steiman and Jonathan Morris
Glossary

Reviews:

This massive volume is truly comprehensive, examining coffee from soil to cup. [The authors] have pulled together 63 essays that address agriculture, economics, gender, culture and history, assessment of quality, effects on health, and future research and development of the coffee bean and coffee production. The authors include coffee farmers, scientists, industry leaders, journalists, historians, and even a mechanical engineer. In addition, there are country profiles providing detailed information about both coffee-producing and coffee-consuming countries (e.g., Vietnam, Brazil, Italy, Germany, Colombia, the United States) that cover subjects such as the history of coffee in the region, climate, business costs, companies in the marketplace, and trends in consumption. The pieces vary in length, depth, and quality: some are familiar and casual, while others have a more scholarly bent. . . . For those who have a serious coffee addiction, the book offers a wealth of content.

— Library Journal


This comprehensive guide to the coffee bean and the beverage itself includes contributions from leading experts in business and academia. They consider the history, global spread, preparation, marketing, and social issues that surround coffee today. The book also includes interviews with people who work in the business, from pickers to roasters, to bring a human side to the story. By tracing coffee`s journey from field to cup, the editors work to create a guide for professionals, coffee lovers, and students to help them better understand their favorite beverage.
— Specialty Coffee Retailer


Coffee: A Comprehensive Guide to the Bean, the Beverage, and the Industry [is] a real heavyweight. The authors. . . point out that they consider the work to be ‘a handbook’, and so using the book as a dip-in becomes perfectly legitimate. ... This book works very well indeed.
— Caffè Culture


One of the very best coffee books to be released in a very long time.
— Barista Magazine Blog


A must read for all coffee people.... Not only does this book include an amazing and global perspective of the bean that became one of the world’s most popular beverages, but also discusses all of the major coffee growing counties in detail from Guatemala to Ethiopia.
— Portland Book Review


A gift to every coffee lover and scholar: this monumental guidebook takes the reader from seed to cup, with stops in every time and place where coffee is significant. Even coffee fanatics will find many stories and details to savor in this rich and rewarding collection.
— Richard Wilk, University of California, Berkeley


Thurston and his colleagues have produced a welcome up-to-date vade mecum on the subject of coffee in all its manifestations. Readable, useful, and to the point, it will answer nearly everybody’s questions about this enigmatic beverage.
— Sidney W. Mintz, Johns Hopkins University


Awards:.

 Winner, Gourmand Awards 2013, Best Coffee Book (2013)
 Winner, Library Journal Best Reference of 2013