It seems as if after the first 175 pages the editors (feeling the same as I did) got bored reading the manuscript and just sent it to the printers out of exhaustion. I'm giving this book only 2 stars due to poor writing and even worse editing. He constantly denigrates past eras for their sexism and racism (primarily in their advertisements, of course) and even for their (atrocious) taste in coffee! It's very easy to appear liberal and enlightened when in comparison with previous generations and I think it's better to avoid potshots at the past. To make matters worse, I really took exception to Pendergrast's "voice". I have nothing of the ad-man, businessman, or economist in me, and it completely failed to capture my interest.
Unfortunately, Pendergrast really glossed over these aspects, instead focusing on the pricing and advertising of coffee through the ages. (Perhaps Pendergrast thinks it is?) I would have loved a history of the (continued) domestication of coffee, a la Michael Pollan's treatment of apples, potatoes, tulips, and marijuana in The Botany of Desire. I totally agree I think that that would have been a fascinating book. "Coffee provides one fascinating thread, stitching together the disciplines of history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, medicine, and business, and offering a way to follow the interactions that have formed a global economy," he states in the concluding chapter. But that's just what Mark Pendergrast has done with Uncommon Grounds!
I have to give the author credit it can't have been easy to make coffee soporific. He has appeared on dozens of television shows, including the Today Show, CBS This Morning, and CNN, and has been interviewed on over 100 radio programs, including All Things Considered, Marketplace, Morning Edition, and many other public radio shows. Pendergrast has given speeches to professional groups, business associations, and college audiences in the United States, Canada, the U.K., and Germany. For God, Country & Coca-Cola was named a notable book of the year by the New York Times, and Discover Magazine chose Mirror Mirror as one of the top science books of the year. Pendergrast’s books have been published in 15 languages.
In 1991, he began writing books full time, which allows him to follow his rather eclectic interests. in English literature from Harvard, taught high school and elementary school, then went back to Simmons College for a masters in library science and worked as an academic librarian-all the while writing freelance articles for newspapers and magazines. Mark Pendergrast was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, the fourth of seven children in a family that valued civil rights, the environment, sailing, reading, and games of chase and charades.
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