(a monarchy that continued, with a hiatus between 5, untilĪlways relatively poor, the Abyssinians were nonetheless a proud, independent people, most of them adopting a cloistered, orthodox form of Christianity when no other African indigenous people held that faith. Mountains to join King Solomon in Jerusalem, and, according to legend, she founded the Axum dynasty that established its rule in the first century A.D. The Queen of Sheba later descended from the Ethiopian Across the nearby Red Sea, further to the north, Moses led his people to freedom. The earthquake-prone Great Rift Valley, has a biblical quality-and little wonder. Situated at the conjunction of the African and Arab worlds known as the Horn of Africa, the mountainous country, split down the middle by Possibly the cradle of mankind, the ancient land of Abyssinia, now called Ethiopia, is the birthplace of coffee. Lewis Lewin, Phantastica: Narcotic and Stimulating Drugs (1931) and by this abuse are inspired to profound wisdom on It may also be observed in coffee house politicians whoĭrink cup after cup. Manifest by a remarkable loquaciousness sometimes accompanied by acceleratedĪssociation of ideas. an excessive state of brain-excitation which becomes

Which is unfortunate, as these gapless section breaks could be so easily fixed by any entry-level sound engineer.The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our WorldĬoffee makes us severe, and grave, and philosophical. When you add this to the author's lack of narrative structure beyond the straightforward dates-and-places of other dry tomes, this strange production quirk oddly contributed to the book's overall encyclopedic feel. I've never experienced this in any of several hundred non-fiction audiobooks, so it's a bit puzzling how the publisher allowed it to happen. Other than chapter breaks, there are no pauses between sections, which consistently created jarring transitions that required effort to figure out that we have left the previous section and started a new, virtually unrelated topic. Worse however - and this will sound like a quibble, but it was quite severe in its impact - is the audiobook's strange production when it comes to spacing between sections. I never quite grew accustomed to Boston's voice for this project, though his reading was clear and professional. I also found the recording to be lacking. The book's encyclopedic breadth was unfortunately matched with an encyclopedic writing style for much of the book. It's true, I now know a lot more about coffee, but I feel as though it was an enormous missed opportunity. A history of coffee should have been an utterly fascinating read, but I found it a chore to finish, despite my gnawing curiosity, owing to the book's lack of narrative flourish, themes, patterns, throughlines, and the other analysis and synthesis that makes great history books great. Huge props to the author's fine research and ambitious thoroughness.

Uncommon grounds by mark pendergrast