New book about the Social Life of Coffee Coffee culture has a grip on the world
From the traditionally tea-drinking China to Indonesia and to Russia – the world loves its coffee. The number of coffee shops has increased in the United Kingdom over recent years too and our daily cup of caffeine is factored into the daily schedule, whether at home, with a pit-stop on the way to work or meeting friends in a coffee shop.
There’s no doubt about it – there is a social aspect to coffee. Articles have been written to describe the community-nature of the coffee shop – in some cases it has become a less obtrusive work-place, complete with wi-fi and computer facilities. In others it can be used for business meetings, too discrete for the office, or social gatherings.
A new book by Brian Cowan has been released that looks further into the historical development of this aspect of the coffee culture – The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse. Described by the Guardian review as a ‘scholarly yet very readable study,’ the book discovers how the coffee bean was introduced to our society and how it became a firmly ingrained part of our culture. Many of us may have been aware of the nature of early coffee houses as places for intellectual debates – picture Doctor Johnson holding forth in one of the London coffee houses for example – and Cowan gives us a new and well-researched insight into these ‘penny universitie.’