Member Review
Review by
Colin E, Reviewer
Gordon Kerr writes a lot of short histories. His latest is A Short History of Coffee. However, don’t be fooled by the title. The book is still 257 pages, every one bursting with facts. Kerr takes us from Bronze Age Ethiopian goatherds through to Starbucks in 2020. He covers the UK, the US, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Austria – in terms of chronological and geographic coverage, Kerr is pretty thorough.
I thought I knew quite a lot about coffee’s history but Kerr knows more! A French doctor claimed in 1771 that coffee could cause nymphomania, as it stimulated women’s erotic imaginings. Well!
Kerr doesn’t just pour facts down our throats. There are insights too: the growing number of seventeenth century coffee houses reflected changes in society such as the emergence of a middle class that had leisure time and didn’t have to worry about falling foul of a capricious monarch or a murderous Church. American consumption skyrocketed in the nineteenth century by virtue of reduced shipping costs, an efficient transportation system and a sophisticated marketing network.
Is the book perfect? No. There’s a wee bit of stereotyping with the implication that Italians need coffee and suffer its absence or poor quality more than anyone else. I’d rather have read more of Kerr’s excellent insights than have had quite so many facts. Although Britain’s seventeenth- and eighteenth-century coffee culture is very well covered, there isn’t anything about its C20th proliferation of coffee houses and companies like Costa and Caffé Nero. There is a long chapter on the C20 & C21st centuries, but it’s mostly about the US, especially Starbucks, and the Far East; together with sections on Decaf and the business of coffee. Given the book is published in the UK and is in English, I’d rather have read more about the modern UK than about C17th-C18th European countries. No doubt if I was writing this in Boston, Germany or Austria, I’d have a different view!
The review copy I received had no table of contents and no index. I assume that will be remedied in the published version.
Those are minor selfish quibbles, though. Kerr’s book is very well worth buying, reading and keeping on your reference shelf.
#AShortHistoryofCoffee #NetGalley
I thought I knew quite a lot about coffee’s history but Kerr knows more! A French doctor claimed in 1771 that coffee could cause nymphomania, as it stimulated women’s erotic imaginings. Well!
Kerr doesn’t just pour facts down our throats. There are insights too: the growing number of seventeenth century coffee houses reflected changes in society such as the emergence of a middle class that had leisure time and didn’t have to worry about falling foul of a capricious monarch or a murderous Church. American consumption skyrocketed in the nineteenth century by virtue of reduced shipping costs, an efficient transportation system and a sophisticated marketing network.
Is the book perfect? No. There’s a wee bit of stereotyping with the implication that Italians need coffee and suffer its absence or poor quality more than anyone else. I’d rather have read more of Kerr’s excellent insights than have had quite so many facts. Although Britain’s seventeenth- and eighteenth-century coffee culture is very well covered, there isn’t anything about its C20th proliferation of coffee houses and companies like Costa and Caffé Nero. There is a long chapter on the C20 & C21st centuries, but it’s mostly about the US, especially Starbucks, and the Far East; together with sections on Decaf and the business of coffee. Given the book is published in the UK and is in English, I’d rather have read more about the modern UK than about C17th-C18th European countries. No doubt if I was writing this in Boston, Germany or Austria, I’d have a different view!
The review copy I received had no table of contents and no index. I assume that will be remedied in the published version.
Those are minor selfish quibbles, though. Kerr’s book is very well worth buying, reading and keeping on your reference shelf.
#AShortHistoryofCoffee #NetGalley
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