Drawing on the accounts of early European travelers, original Arabic sources on jurisprudence and etiquette, and treatises on coffee from the period, the author recounts the colorful early history of the spread of coffee and the influence of coffeehouses in the medieval Near East. Detailed descriptions of the design, atmosphere, management, and patrons of early coffeehouses make fascinating reading for anyone interested in the history of coffee and the unique institution of the coffeehouse in urban Muslim society
What induced the British to adopt foreign coffee-drinking customs in the seventeenth century? Why did an entirely new social institution, the coffeehouse, emerge as the primary place for consumption of this new drink? In this lively book, Brian Cowan locates the answers to these questions in the particularly British combination of curiosity, commerce, and civil society. Cowan provides the definitive account of the origins of coffee drinking and coffeehouse society, and in so doing he reshapes our understanding of the commercial and consumer revolutions in Britain during the long Stuart century. Britain’s virtuosi, gentlemanly patrons of the arts and sciences, were profoundly interested in things strange and exotic. Cowan explores how such virtuosi spurred initial consumer interest in coffee and invented the social template for the first coffeehouses. As the coffeehouse evolved, rising to take a central role in British commercial and civil society, the virtuosi were also transformed by their own invention.
A comprehensive history of the growth of the coffee industry and the coffee house. This vastly informative, compellingly interesting, and beautifully illustrated work is a complement to everyone's personal library. (Schiffer)
Most of us can’t make it through morning without our cup (or cups) of joe, and we’re not alone. Coffee is a global beverage: it’s grown commercially on four continents and consumed enthusiastically on all seven—and there is even an Italian espresso machine on the International Space Station. Coffee’s journey has taken it from the forests of Ethiopia to the fincas of Latin America, from Ottoman coffee houses to “Third Wave” cafés, and from the simple coffee pot to the capsule machine. In Coffee: A Global History, Jonathan Morris explains both how the world acquired a taste for this humble bean, and why the beverage tastes so differently throughout the world. Sifting through the grounds of coffee history, Morris discusses the diverse cast of caffeinated characters who drank coffee, why and where they did so, as well as how it was prepared and what it tasted like. He identifies the regions and ways in which coffee has been grown, who worked the farms and who owned them, and how the beans were processed, traded, and transported. Morris also explores the businesses behind coffee—the brokers, roasters, and machine manufacturers—and dissects the geopolitics linking producers to consumers. Written in a style as invigorating as that first cup of Java, and featuring fantastic recipes, images, stories, and surprising facts, Coffee will fascinate foodies, food historians, baristas, and the many people who regard this ancient brew as a staple of modern life.
Arkansas-born educator and scholar Cyrus Adler had the opportunity to spend a significant amount of time in and around Constantinople in the late nineteenth century. During his time there, he became fascinated by the rich tradition of storytelling that was carried on in the region's coffeehouses. This collection brings together a treasure trove of Turkish stories, fables, legends, and parables.
"I am a poet and artist," Huffstickler says in Holy Secrets: The Art and Poetry of Albert Huffstickler, a film by Matthew D. Listiak. "And an observer of humanity . . . from a safe distance." His poems embody his mystical observations in language that is both literary and commonplace. Why I Write in Coffee Houses and Diners, includes selections his books, chapbooks, and journal publications. Huffstickler's extraordinary treatment of the ordinary illustrates his own quest and the simple lives of those he meets, including strangers in cafes and homeless people on the street.
How the simple commodity of coffee came to rewrite the experience of metropolitan life When the first coffee-house opened in London in 1652, customers were bewildered by this strange new drink from Turkey. But those who tried coffee were soon won over. More coffee-houses were opened across London and, in the following decades, in America and Europe. For a hundred years the coffee-house occupied the centre of urban life. Merchants held auctions of goods, writers and poets conducted discussions, scientists demonstrated experiments and gave lectures, philanthropists deliberated reforms. Coffee-houses thus played a key role in the explosion of political, financial, scientific and literary change in the 18th century. In the 19th century the coffee-house declined, but the 1950s witnessed a dramatic revival in the popularity of coffee with the appearance of espresso machines and the `coffee bar', and the 1990s saw the arrival of retail chains like Starbucks.
The Palaces of Memories is a journey into India through the Indian Coffee Houses, a national network of worker-owned cafs which can be found in cities throughout the sub-continent. The Coffee Houses simultaneously speak of a Post-Independence optimism and a now-faded grandeur. Stuart Freedman has visited more than thirty of the most significant and beautiful Coffee Houses throughout India. Away from the stereotypes of poverty and exotica they have allowed him to enter an 'ordinary' India, an environment which echoes the greasy-spoon cafes of a long-forgotten London.
