An intriguing account that darkens the depths of that daily cup of joe.
A broad-ranging, often surprising study of the economics and political ecology of coffee.
Drawing alongside such studies as Stanley Mintz’s Sweetness and Power and Tom Standage’s A History of the World in Six Glasses, Sedgewick, a professor of history and American studies, debuts with an examination of the intersection of people from different parts of the world in forging an extractive colonial economy. One was a Brazilian immigrant to El Salvador who arrived in the mid-1800s and set to work nudging the agricultural economy away from indigo and toward coffee. That deal was sealed with the arrival, decades later, of another immigrant, this one from England. James Hill, writes the author, oversaw the conversion of that agricultural economy to the monocultural production of coffee, with coffee plantations that eventually took up a huge percentage of the country’s arable land. All of this was done in concert with American markets, with the timing just right for the arrival of immigrants to the U.S. who came from coffee-drinking Mediterranean societies. It also appealed to a change of tastes that, in its day, had children both drinking and growing the stuff, with Danish immigrant Jacob Riis observing in New York “men and boys of all ages crowded around one-cent coffee stalls on the street.” Sedgewick casts a wide net in his capably written book, observing, for instance, that liberals in newly independent El Salvador had once made advances to the U.S. to be incorporated as a state. Moreover, he links the rise of the coffee monoculture to the development of an enriched ruling class in that country but also an immiseration of the peasantry: “The transformation of the volcanic highlands into a coffee monoculture transformed the diet of El Salvador’s working people into a flat, featureless landscape of tortillas and beans.” Meanwhile, workers in the U.S. became so dependent on coffee, and so powerful in times of labor shortage, that the coffee break was enshrined in the nation’s culture and remains so today.
An intriguing account that darkens the depths of that daily cup of joe.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-59420-615-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
HISTORY | BUSINESS | WORLD | ECONOMICS | GENERAL BUSINESS | GENERAL HISTORY
BOOK REVIEW
Wingo rather frothily admits that, like ``all good sea stories,'' her reminiscence of her stint in the WAVES has been ``embellished.'' Now a retired teacher and a Santa Monica community activist, Wingo remembers feeling like Joan of Arc at her enlistment in the WAVES (Women Appointed for Voluntary Emergency Service) in 1944 at the age of 20. An Irish Catholic raised in Detroit, she attends boot camp at Hunter College in the Bronx, where the ``barracks'' are a five-story apartment building. Recruits are called Ripples (``Little Waves, silly''), and Wingo says that ``boot camp is like a harder Girl Scout camp'' where you learn that a ``misbegotten granny knot could screw up the whole war.'' Her bunkmates (the characters are composites) include Coralee Tolliver, a chunky ``hillbilly'' whom she despises (though Wingo later serves as her maid of honor), and Barbara Lee Corman, who calls everyone ``honeychile'' and juggles five ``fian-says.'' The trio gets assigned to the Great Lakes Naval Station in Chicago where they train on guns. Following a Navy Day parade in which Wingo, in full dress, rides astraddle a torpedo, she and her buddies are shipped out to Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay to train the men in the Armed Guard for at-sea duty while they, as women, will remain ashore. Wingo falls for a tattooed sailor named Blackie (he calls her ``Toots'') until he admits he visits prostitutes because it ``saves the nice girls for when we want to marry them.'' She describes a chaotic V-J Day celebration and a whirlwind tour of New York City; and she offers an entire chapter about getting drunk and sick aboard a Russian ship anchored in San Francisco Bay. Jocular and occasionally appealing, this suffers from an almost complete lack of hard information or historical perspective on the very real contributions of the WAVES.
Pub Date: Nov. 11, 1994
ISBN: 1-55750-924-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
A strongly argued defense of polyester.
Forget the bad music, embarrassing clothes, and sleazy sexuality: Schulman (History/Boston Univ.) is here to set the record straight on the disco decade.
After a preface that features an odd encomium of his own work (“It offers a rich, evocative portrait of the United States in the 1970s”), the author settles in to explore his thesis—i.e., “The Seventies transformed American economic and cultural life as much as, if not more than, the revolutions in manners and morals of the 1920s and the 1960s.” He begins with 1968, a year that witnessed assassinations, political unrest, and a surprising surge of support for George Wallace. He offers a devastating assessment of the Nixon presidency, but credits Nixon with the insight to recognize and exploit the shifts of political power taking place in the US (from the old North and Northeast to the new South and West). Schulman also assesses the demographic and intellectual forces that fractured the old “melting pot” consensus and created the now-pervasive notion that diversity is the highest social good. He also chronicles the emergence of the Christian right (“This parallel universe proved surprisingly vast”) and the rise of the New South. Schulman writes compassionately about Jimmy Carter—but recognizes his utter inability to lead the country. And, while he admits Reagan’s unquestioned contributions to the American resurgence, Schulman recognizes that “The Reagan recovery did little for working people.” Throughout the 1970s, Schulman maintains, there was a “southernization of American life” and a decline in social and political activism. The author devotes considerable attention to the popular culture (especially films, TV shows, and music) of the period, but he largely ignores serious literature and the other arts—and he is given to seeing much in little, as when he attributes great cultural importance to Evel Knievel’s farewell tour and to Billie Jean King’s whupping of the feckless Bobby Riggs.
A strongly argued defense of polyester.Pub Date: May 14, 2001
ISBN: 0-684-82814-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2001
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
