UNCOMMON GROUNDS: The History of Coffee and How it Transformed our World.

UNCOMMON GROUNDS: The History of Coffee and How it Transformed our World By Mark Pendergrast Basic Books, $27.50

SINCE THE FIRST BEANS WERE serendipitously discovered by the legendary goatherd Kaldi, in Ethiopia, coffee has been the muse and stimulus of imams, artists, writers, and radicals. Once the exclusive treat of nobility and religious men, coffee would go on to fuel the common man through the industrial age and into the information age. Now our collective fashions and addictions have made the bean ubiquitous and coffee snobbery de rigeur. And yet few coffee consumers know the path--geographical, political, even karmic--that their beloved bean has taken.

In his new book, Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World, Mark Pendergrast does his best to educate the drinker and provide some moral alternatives to conspicuous consumption. While underscoring the heady brew's role in geopolitics and environmental devastation, the book's strength lies in Pendergrast's chronicle of quirky factoids and wanton capitalism as exemplified by the lust for the ambrosia of our times.

He credits coffee with the end of slavery in Brazil, the start of revolutions in Guatemala, and even hints that the French Revolution was spawned by the culture of coffee. A Renaissance Turkish woman could divorce her husband if he failed to provide her with her daily quota of coffee. Instead of banning the dreaded "Muslim drink," Pope Clement VIII baptized coffee, making it a "truly Christian beverage" A century later, Turkish troops fleeing Vienna would leave behind sacks of coffee, which were discovered by an innovative Franz George Kolschitzky, who launched the Viennese cafe tradition.

For all his painstaking research, Pendergrast's skill as a non-academic historian shines best when he reaches the modern New World through his often-witty descriptions of an industry dominated by imperialistic traditions, sexism, and blinded, arrogant leaders. Among the more engrossing tales is Pendergrast's portrait of the fanatic creator of the successful coffee-alternative Postum and Grape-Nuts cereal, C.W. Post, and of the coffee men he left in his zealous anti-coffee wake. On the news that his archenemy, Post, had suffered a nervous breakdown after years of denouncing "coffee-slugged nerves," Tea & Coffee Trade Journal editor William Ukers wrote with sardonic glee, "We would not appear to gloat over his misfortune." Reveling, he continued, "Indeed, if his breakdown is in any measure due to his drinking Postum all these years, he has our deep sympathy" In wishing Post a rapid recovery, Ukers suggested a nurse "slip him a cup of coffee now and then during his convalescence."

To add injury to irony, Post was soon after diagnosed with appendicitis. For years, he had claimed that his Grape-Nuts cereal cured just such an raiment, For a health-nut who wrote that sickness was the creation of a feeble human mind, the humiliating need of an operation and recuperation plunged him deeper into a depression that led to his eventual suicide. He left the family business to his daughter Marjorie Merriweather Post, who would twist fate further by creating General Foods and purchasing Maxwell House Coffee.

Tucked in between profiles are world wars, cataclysmic frosts and droughts, and the rise and falls of coffee cartels, but all are personalized via dramatic characterization. Pendergrast provides a biased and bemused account of the men behind the rise of Starbucks (no glamorization of the chain here). And for those readers still fumbling with kitsch-hip, bad-brew percolators, Pendergrast has a special appendix on "How to Brew the Perfect Cup."

With so much to offer it would be understandable to overlook the greatest downfall of the book--the misleading title. As Pendergrast rightly points out, coffee is a worldwide obsession, one that has affected global politics, economy and social values. Yet the first 1,200 years of coffee history, filled with political turmoil, ecological disaster, religious devotion, and clandestine romances, are reduced to a total of 40 pages.

And while his chronicles of European and Latin American developments are extensive enough to argue that Pendergrast's scope goes beyond the United States, he all but ignores Africa and Asia, where the specialty coffee evolution has led to increased demand from Indonesian and other desirable arabica-rich regions. There is one very notable exception: Pendergrast's coverage of Idi Amin's use of Uganda's booming coffee crops to fund his bloody tyranny, the U.S. congressional delay of a Ugandan product boycott, and the international coffee men who profited from it, like the American coffee importer Claude Saks. Following a massive heart attack, Saks left coffee and took up New Age spirituality, writing, "Picture in front of your eyes a light, golden mist which is gentle, warm, and full of unconditional love just for you." Barely restraining himself throughout his recanting of the ugly Ugandan coffee dealings, Pendergrast lets loose on Saks, writing in a footnote: "Perhaps Saks could have given these instructions to the Ugandans in their concentration camps."

Thus it is not so much myopia on Pendergrast's part as mild hubris in the subtitling of the book. A better option might have been "How Coffee Transformed The Modern American World"--a more accurate and equally appealing tag line. For even when describing international political, economic, or social developments, Pendergrast highlights how these events affected the U.S. market, sometimes as if the United States were the only market for coffee and coffee products: "It appears, then, that the higher costs are probably justified, at least in terms of the U.S. economy and lifestyle," he writes.

Yet this is a book that deserves to be read without the criticisms and false expectations that come with such grandiose intentions. North Americans are some of the greatest consumers (though the per capita title goes to Finland), and Central and South Americans are the greatest producers of coffee in the world. So a book dedicated to the history of, characters in, and possibilities for the American coffee industries--such as Uncommon Grounds--is not only a good read but a vital one for anyone who considers him or herself an American political economist. Or simply a responsible coffee drinker.

HEATHER BOURBEAU is the international-policy reporter for TheStreet.com.