Stewart Lee Allen

I had a belly full of this book.

Page 163 is when I finished with this book. Author wrote about being on a barge in the Congo where stowaways were hung by their wrists and whipped below deck. But even more appalling was his description of the crew smoking monkeys...alive. It turned my stomach and at that moment decided I had reached my limit of exposure to the cruelties recounted in this book.

It started off interesting enough: which fruits have been considered the forbidden fruit in the show more Garden of Eden, how the tomato was once considered poisonous by Europeans, the strange eating habits of Christian female saints, how cultures denigrate one another's food choices, and so on.

However, he includes no footnotes.* I noticed he included rumors and low quality quotes. Nor could I find any biographical information supporting his expertise. So before I myself would share any tidbits I found interesting, I will at least Google it first.

I spot-read around beyond infamous page 163, and made note of this as an example of what I could continue to expect: on page 234 he wrote about the strictest vegetarians (he definitely is a meat-eater himself), the followers of Janism. He lists seeded fruits and vegetables that are forbidden to them, "...and almost every other food that makes the vegetarian's life occasionally bearable."

Yep, he insulted Jainists, Vegetarians, and Vegans, in one remark. I'm a 5 year Vegan and, along with millions of non-meat-eaters around the world, I have learned how to cook and enjoy the tastiest food I've ever eaten in my life. My food life is way beyond "occasionally bearable."

I write this review (and marking it as read) because the premise is interesting, enticing even, for potential readers like myself. However, it includes multiple instances of extreme cruelty, the kind of thing once you know, you can't un-know.

I'd call Allen's book a loose entertainment, perhaps part memoir, rather than a studied history. It's a disappointing treatment of a fascinating subject. Fair warning!

*There are endnotes. They are not citations of sources but rather continuation of information along the main text's line. show less

Beginning in the Ethiopian city of Harrar, the author travels throughout Africa, into India, Turkey, Austria, France and South America, all to follow the path of the coffee plant and its many variations. He tracks down the descendant of the man who may have created the first coffee plantation, is present for a spiritual coffee ritual in Ethiopia, travels through Yemen and witnesses the widespread addiction to a plant called qat, and attends a rare performance by whirling dervishes in Konya. show more He also traces the roots of various coffee varieties and the people who were instrumental in making coffee a worldwide beverage.
Allen is an American adventurer, a man who is so besotted with the romance of adventure that he's fearless and pretty much rendered incapable of saying no, whether helping an art forger or in becoming a human smuggler (he dropped out only because the plan was too disorganized). The book was first published in 1999, and the world has changed enough in that short amount of time that his adventures would be so much more difficult, if not impossible, today. His travels are fascinating, both for the history and the people he meets. If you enjoy something like Around the World in 80 Days, you'd probably like this sort-of non-fiction version that is absolutely crammed with places you've never heard of before. show less

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 show more 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. show less

This is partly a book about coffee, its history, and its effects on the world, and partly a slightly disjointed travelogue in which the author traipses around five different continents visiting coffee-related places and doing various more or less coffee-related things.

I liked one of these two things considerably better than the other. The facts about and musings on coffee and its place in history were interesting, entertainingly written, and generally pretty fun. But the account of the show more author's travels, which involved a lot of doing stupid and occasionally illegal things, often left me shaking my head a bit and thinking, "Who is this guy, and why am I reading about his dumb adventures, again?" show less