Coffeeland

Coffeeland, Augustine Sedgewick, Allen Lane, £25
This gripping book tracks the history of coffee from ‘mysterious Ottoman custom’ four hundred years ago to ‘the unrivalled work drug’ of today. Sedgewick begins the book by asking: ‘What does it mean to be connected to faraway people and places through everyday things?’ He probes this idea that coffee connected the world – looking at its place in the history of capitalism and its role in perpetuating global inequality. It’s a hefty, excellently-researched book, its political and economic arguments softened by the human story at its heart – that of James Hill, who was born in poverty in Manchester in the late 18th century and made his fortune as the ‘coffee king’ of El Salvador.