Coffee Mark Pendergast\'s Book \"Uncommon

Coffee

Mark Pendergast's book "Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How it Transformed Our World" is presenting a glorifying as well as a demonizing role coffee plaid ever since an Ethiopian goat herder discovered it, more than ten centuries ago. Ever since coffee entered the gate of human beverages, it slowly and irreversibly spread throughout the world. Its name was linked to revolutions, revolts and mostly everything related to human passions.

Pendergast sets the starting point of his history of the coffee, time 0, as the time when, according to the Ethiopian legend, the goats had eaten the leaves and fruits of the coffee plants for the first time. He travels in time back and forth and links this second most traded product in the world, after oil, coffee, to the main events in the history of mankind. It is both an easy and tremendously hard undertaking since coffee really accompanied revolutions, monarch's decisions to allow coffeehouses or to ban it for various political reasons, slavery, deforestation, depopulation, as well as globalization, the shrinkage of the rain forest and last but not least, a high level of inequity when comparing the hands that grow the coffee crops and harvest it with those that collect the money after having sold it and ultimately, those that bring it to the mouth every morning before going to work or during a coffee break in the developed countries.

Only those who love coffee and enjoy drinking the hot, aromatic and flavorful cup every day can completely understand this book. The addiction to a cup of good coffee adds an additional dimension to the book. The coffee flavor makes the book an enjoyable history and geography lesson, easier to digest than others.

Ever since it entered the diet of modern people, the coffee was equally blamed or raised at the rank of having beneficial effects on the health of those who drank it. Even nowadays, there are disputes regarding the balance between these effects and the quantity one should drink in order to experience only the positive sides of this dark brew. From time to time, newspapers are and magazines are presenting the public with the results of nre researches in the field of coffee mass consumption. Usually, scientists agree to some of the positive effects, while there is still a lot of debate over the rest of the effects coffee has on our nervous system as well as our heart, stomach and other essential organs in our body. Pendergast has seized a topic that is obviously dear to him. His travels and wide knowledge of the history of the world as well as the economic side that he introduced in tackling the subject made this book a complete and enjoyable reading for everyone.

I believe that coffee is only an instrument in our human quarrels, even when these are tending to extend to conflicts between men and women (as in England, when women were first excluded from the coffeehouses), monarchs and their people, as in the Arab and later the European world, owners and plantation workers, in Latin America, or even nations as during the French or American Revolution. As soon as some product has developed a market and the demand for it increases, it can also become an instrument of blackmail. Coffee being the second most traded product in the world, it also accounts for the source of social earthquakes due to the huge difference between the price one pays at the retailer, be it a coffee shop or a supermarket and the price paid for the working hours at the plantations.

Pendergast's book keeps reminding the reader that our globalized coffee addicted world is far from having overcome all the obstacles in front of enjoying a cup of coffee pure and simple. Clearly, the price for a cup of coffee is still high because it still hides a moral dilemma. Cheap coffee for the well developed countries means today that the producers were able to grow and harvest their crops almost for free. One still cannot live with a clear conscience and drink a cup of coffee without paying the price of knowing that somewhere in the world there are people who are switching to growing coca instead of coffee trees because coffee, the only alternative to becoming a villain, failed to provide the necessary means for a decent living. Coffee continues to be a product that brings economic advantages for latifundia plantation owners and the rest of the economic chain after them and only small compensations for those who effectively work on these plantations. Although Pendergast is obviously very fond of his coffee, he does not neglect to emphasize this evil aspect in the history of coffee.

The Prologue to this book is almost an introduction to a fairytale. The author himself is picking coffee berries in on the mountain slopes of Guatemala. More than a fairytale, it sounds as if he describes the beginning of a love affair, or better yet, the finding of a long lost lover. In spite of the technological advances made ever since the beginning of the industrial era, Pendergatst's description of the harvesting in Guatemala, in the late 1990s reveals methods rather close to the rudimentary Medieval times. The only sector related to crops growing and harvesting appears to be that of coffee trees varieties that are used today for the most efficient results: hybrids. On the other hand, science strongly interfered in the rest of the process involving coffee consumption. The technological advancement and scientific discoveries that led to mass communication means such as the railroad, the steamship and all the rest until modern maritime and air transportation means offered traders ways to reduce the transportation costs tremendously. And finally, the wonderful science of marketing brought coffee on the everyday tables of the masses worldwide, making the costs for purchasing a pound of coffee lower than ever before. Pendergast bridges the gap between the first coffee plants discovered in Ethiopia and the huge coffee industry involving giants like Starbucks by presenting the development of the coffee industry from both social and economical points-of-view.