The Coffee-House - A cultural history

Markman Ellis

Phoenix

2004

304 páginas

10h 8m

ISBN-10: 0753818981

"How has the coffee-house changed our experience of life on the city? The wide-ranging history tells the story of the coffee-house, from its emergence in London in the mid-seventeenth century to today's spectacular growth of coffee-bar chains such as Starbucks.

The coffee-house has always been at the center of urban life. It is here that merchants held auctions, writers and poets conducted discussions, scientists demonstrated experiments and gave lectures, and philanthropists deliberated reforms.

This readable and scholarly account of an important and curiously rejected phenomenon. Rich in evocative details (our forebears took their coffee back, strong and bitter, and brew "redolent of stewed prunes, burnt beans and spot") and strong on social, political and economic context, The Coffee-house is a book for the coffee-lover and historian alike."

The Spectator