The intricate synergies of coffee and capitalism form the subtext of the historian Augustine Sedgewick’s thoroughly engrossing first book ...'What does it mean to be connected to faraway people and places through everyday things?' Sedgewick asks in his early pages. Coffeeland offers a fascinating meditation on that question, by rendering once-obscure lines of connection starkly visible.

... a wide-ranging chronicle of the role of coffee in American culture and commerce and, above all, in the fascinating history of El Salvador, a small country along Central America’s Pacific Coast that is rich in coffee beans but not in traditions of political stability or broad-based property rights.

Extremely wide-ranging and well researched, Sedgewick’s story reaches out into American political history, not to mention the history of American breakfast.

... not relentlessly grim. In its last lap, it strikes some positive notes.

...[an] energising study of how an everyday commodity has ploughed up the world’s surface and hacked deep into its economic and political design.

That Hill is not terribly interesting, beyond his success and his meticulous cruelty, is disguised by Sedgewick cramming his narrative with many other characters. Sometimes three or four appear on as many pages, never to appear again or only fleetingly on a second mention. Some of them call out for a book themselves.

... a book whose style and approach will appeal to some readers more than others. The text is both a curio-shop of forgotten snippets of history and quirky facts.

... impressive.

By following several generations of the Hill family, Sedgewick brings agency to the commodity-centric history that historians often pursue to convey the global dimensions of modern capitalism...But focusing on global capital flows, supply chains, consumer markets and labor mobility can sometimes minimize what Sedgewick reveals so well: the actual choices made by the producers and importers and advertisers who merchandised the goods, the economic and political alliances they forged in the process and the often harsh local consequences of their actions.

... fascinating.

Sedgewick’s wide-ranging work is most appropriate for readers with a serious interest in food economics..

Coffee: there have been more books written about the black stuff than you’d imagine.

...thought-provoking and gracefully written.

A broad-ranging, often surprising study of the economics and political ecology of coffee.