Coffee: A Comprehensive Guide to the Bean, the Beverage, and the Industry

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

Robert W. Thurston is professor emeritus of history at Miami University, and he is the senior editor of Coffee: A Comprehensive Guide to the Bean, the Beverage, and the Industry. He is managing partner at Oxford Coffee Company, a roastery and coffee bar in Oxford, Ohio.