The Devil's Cup is the best kind of quest story -- a man in pursuit of something he loves for no reason other than to satisfy his own curiosity. In a journey that parallels the coffee bean's chronological journey through time, Stewart Lee Allen travels from Ethiopia to al-Makkah (hence the term mocha) in Yemen, Calcutta to Istanbul, and finally Vienna to Paris. Then he hops a freighter to Brazil and concludes with a car trip across the U.S. in search of the perfect cup of coffee. Along the way he visits Rimbaud's house in Harar, crosses to Yemen with a boatload of Somali refugees, turns down numerous offers of qat, conspires with smugglers of forged Rajasthani miniatures, whirls with dervishes, and tracks down the descendants of the adventurer who first brought coffee to the new world. In Brazil he tours the torture chamber of a slaveholding coffee baron, ducks a doomsday cult and communes with an ancient Ethiopian coffee spirit through an Afro-Brazilian shaman. Back home he cajoles a friend into taking a java-fueled ride across route 66 and almost lands in jail. Ultimately he does find the most "American" cup of coffee somewhere between New York and LA.

The author did a wonderful job of weaving in more coffee trivia than I ever imagined possible without bogging down his fast-paced narrative. Particularly fascinating were the myriad of ways he saw coffee prepared, his explanation of the relationship between coffee and Islam and his history of cafés in European culture and commerce. When he began making plans to attend an Ethiopian ceremony to invoke the Zar coffee spirits to perform an exorcism, I was a little concerned about where the book was going. But after his respectful recounting I found his quest to understand coffee's anthropological context to be an added dimension of the story. Anyone who enjoys travel or adventure writing will find this a worthwhile few hours. For coffee lovers, with a great cup in hand, it’s even better. ( )

You have to be a caffeinne addict to write this book or at least a really really huge fan of coffee. It's a non-fiction book where the writer traces cofee from its humble beginning in Ethiopia to the Middle Eastern countries to Europe and then America. It's really interesting to read that it started with boiling the leaves rather than the beans and nobody could really pinpoint where / when in time that people started to roast coffee beans etc... I enjoyed the first half of the book more as it describes his trip rather than the second half of the book which I think is more of Europe history and I felt a little bit tangential to the whole point. I do like the end though when they went in search of the 'best of the worst' coffee in the US. They have had so much of it that they're high on caffeine. ( )

Excellent read--combined a travelogue with the history of coffee. Makes the interesting point that the more civilized a coffee-culture becomes, the more likely they are to be taken over by another people that makes terrible coffee.

http://kdegelau.blogspot.com/2006/05/... ( )

Before i star this review i have to confess - i bought this in the hospital 2nd hand book shop and read it during those sleepless first nights after my son was born. And yes, it had a new mama jonesing for coffee. This is a pretty good book from that genre of literary non-fiction devoted to trying to be hip by writing about 'obscure' subjects - barbed-wire, screwdrivers, salt, coffee, whatever. Admittedly it started to go a bit strange when it hit the travel across America coffee is just another drug bit, but like the history and the discussions of the origins of coffee as the drug of choice for so many of us (for the record, for me it is yes coffee, and alcohol. Not both combined i might add). ( )