Suggested Reading
Drink too much coffee and now you can???t sleep? You???re in luck, because the internet is teeming with fascinating coffee history essays to help you pass the time. For instance, what do you really know about the long and winding journey that brought coffee from Ethiopia to your local Starbucks? And did you know that when Americans stopped drinking beer for breakfast and started drinking coffee, they got a lot more done? It???s the truth!
There are tons of coffee web pages, no doubt, but I humbly offer these few links to get you started.
1. Malcolm Gladwell shows you all the ways coffee made us what we are today. His discussion includes (but is not limited to) the science of caffeine as a stimulant, subversive caf?? culture, and how caffeine continues to drive modern intellectual discovery. This is great article.
2. The New York Times gives you the first chapter of Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World, by Mark Pendergrast. Here is everything you wanted to know about the origins of coffee drinking, and maybe a few things you didn???t. If you like what you read, you can get the whole book.
3. This is NPR???s brief history of the coffee break, which wasn???t invented until the early 1900s. It makes you wonder how people in the 19th century found the time to gossip about their coworkers at the daguerreotype factory. This page also has links to other essays and audio clips.
Enjoy!
