Brina's Reviews > The Devil's Cup: Coffee, The Driving Force In History

Recently, the Goodreads blog asked users to name their favorite nonfiction books. In addition to the usual bestsellers posted, a friend of mine suggested The Devil's Cup about the history of coffee consumption. I consider myself to a coffee drinker and slight caffeine addict, so I was intrigued by this concept for a book. In a part historical overview and part travelogue, Stewart Lee Allen enlightens his readers on how coffee emerged as the beverage it is today.

Allen's quest begins in Ethiopia. At each stop on his worldwide journey he enlists a native to assist him in finding out the cultural components of coffee drinking. Being the first stop on his trip, Allen details readers how originally coffee was not a drink but a nut first chewed by animals. When people realized that the animals had an extra energy surge after chewing these nuts or berries, they proceeded to find a way to make the beans fit for human consumption. Thus, the world's first coffee was born, although in the 1400s Africa it was more of a stew than a drink. Yet, eastern Africans had a leg up on the rest of the world in terms of instant energy and a commodity to trade. The coffee phenomenon had begun.

Allen travels from Ethiopia to Yemen and later to Turkey, India, Europe, Brazil, and finally the United States. At each stop he updates how coffee drinking took root there. In Yemen, a short boat ride away from Africa, it was through trading. The trade winds eventually made it to Turkey and coffee became the drink of choice in the Ottoman Empire. Allen enjoyed his brew in the Bosporus most of all, mainly for its originality. He also details how an Ottoman invasion of Austria set up Viennese coffee houses in the early 1600s and how a group of monks both there and in Italy gave rise to the drink we know today as cappuccino. I found the European sections to be the most interesting as coffee transitioned from a primitive drink to the modern one consumers enjoy today.

While I found the history portions of this book to be informative, the travelogue did not necessarily work for me. As Allen travels the world searching for a perfect cup of joe, he needs to finance his own journey. He tells readers how he is scammed in third world countries and travels as a ship hand between Italy and Brazil. Some of the sections are a little too detailed for my taste and divert me from the primary subject of the book, which is the history of coffee. While a lesson of what not to do while traveling the world, for me this personal information did not fit with the book as a whole.

The Devil's Cup was an easy reading diversion for me as I took a brief respite from various reading challenges. I enjoyed learning the history and cultural components behind the drink I am dependent on for my morning energy today. Like any scientific discovery, how something evolves to where it is presently is a subject that piques my interest. The travelogue sections of the book aside, The Devil's Cup was an intriguing read and interesting for any coffee connoisseur, which I rate 3.25 stars.