Coffeeland

One Man's Dark Empire and the Making of Our Favorite Drug

By: Augustine Sedgewick

Narrated by: Jason Culp

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice

“Extremely wide-ranging and well researched . . . In a tradition of protest literature rooted more in William Blake than in Marx.”—Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker

The epic story of how coffee connected and divided the modern world

Coffee is an indispensable part of daily life for billions of people around the world. But few coffee drinkers know this story. It centers on the volcanic highlands of El Salvador, where James Hill, born in the slums of Manchester, England, founded one of the world’s great coffee dynasties at the turn of the twentieth century. Adapting the innovations of the Industrial Revolution to plantation agriculture, Hill helped turn El Salvador into perhaps the most intensive monoculture in modern history—a place of extraordinary productivity, inequality, and violence. In the process, both El Salvador and the United States earned the nickname “Coffeeland,” but for starkly different reasons, and with consequences that reach into the present.

Provoking a reconsideration of what it means to be connected to faraway people and places, Coffeeland tells the hidden and surprising story of one of the most valuable commodities in the history of global capitalism.

©2020 Augustine Sedgewick (P)2020 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

“[A] beautifully written, engaging and sprawling portrait of how coffee made modern El Salvador, while it also helped to remake consumer habits worldwide.”—Lizabeth Cohen, New York Times Book Review

“Throughly engrossing . . . [Sedgewick's] literary gifts and prodigious research make for a deeply satisfying reading experience studded with narrative surprise.”—Michael Pollan, bestselling author of This is Your Mind on Plants

“Extremely wide-ranging and well researched, Sedgewick’s story reaches out into American political history, not to mention the history of American breakfast, but it is mostly set in El Salvador, where a large-scale monoculture of coffee began, at the turn of the twentieth century, under the fiendishly brilliant direction of a British expat named James Hill [. . .] The originality and ambition of Sedgewick’s work is that he insistently sees the dynamic between producer and consumer—Central American peasant and North American proletarian—not merely as one of exploited and exploiter but as a manufactured co-dependence between two groups both exploited by capitalism.”—Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker

Slow burn

Started off bored for the first few pages, but then expanded and ventured into unexpected directions

Came to learn of coffee, learned so much MORE!

I am a Christ-follower with a desire to make this world a better place. While I am an outsider to the hospitality supply chain of coffee from earth to cup to lips, I see a great opportunity to utilize this gracious beverage as a vehicle to impact lives for the better through discipleship. Visit our FB page, International Coffee Cooperative, to join in the conversation and add your perspective.

Reading this coffee history and it's focus on the Hill family and El Salvador, I have been blessed seeing the struggle of others and some triumphs we have gained as a history of relationships and labor and comfort. This book has been a useful education into the scene behind the sip...and like Jaime Hill, I will never be the same.

I highly recommend this book! The thorough research and depth of the coffee story is highly beneficial to our understanding of what we as consumers enjoy because of the work of others.

I listened to the Audible version but plan to buy the hardbound book for my library.

Superb history

Lively book that relates a grand historical narrative spanning a century+ using one export crop, coffee, and one family as a central focus. I loved it!

A must read for every coffee drinker!

From now on, I will never see or drink my cup of coffee the same way I did before.

I love coffee

A absorbing story of coffee in El Salvador from the early days of an English settler to the struggle of the poor native workers trying to eke out life on the plantations.
It isn’t a pretty history but thanks to one family member we can learn.

2 Stories in One

This book is amazing! It tells the story of coffee and of United States history. I learned about how US citizens treated Latin Americans in their own countries. I learned about the many good things that President Hoover did. I learned about the science behind coffee and caffeine. There is so much here in just-One book.

Rough start, but gets better

Starts out a bit rough. Lots of disparate annecdotes that don't seem to be relevant. If you stick with it, the second half is more engaging.

very interesting

the history of coffee and how it impacted the history of Central America thru the years. very informative. an independent view of El salvodor.

revealing

Well told, and an interesting story. The history is fascinating, something everyone who has experienced coffee should know.

Superb narration by Jason Culp

An important story, and the narration by Jason Culp is excellent. The issues are important and troubling.