Black Gold - A Dark History of Coffee

Arguably the most valuable legally traded commodity in the world after oil, coffee's dark five-hundred year history links alchemy and anthropology, poetry and politics, and science and slavery. Revolutions have been hatched in coffee houses, secret societies and commercial alliances formed, and politics and art 11 endlessly debated. With over a hundred million people looking to it for their livelihood, the coffee industry is now the world's largest employer and the financial lifeblood of many third-world countries. But with world prices recently at a historic low, the future looks uncertain. In this thought-provoking expose, Tony Wild, coffee trader and historian, explores coffee's dismal colonial past and its perilous corporate present, revealing the shocking exploitation at the heart of the industry.