[Sca-cooks] All About Coffee

[Terry Decker]

I have just received my copy of William H. Ukers's All About Coffee recently 
published by Adams Media.  On the cover it says "Abridged and Excerpted." 
After a quick read, I say "Gutted."

Ukers founded the Tea and Coffee Trade Journal in 1905 and published the 
original edition of All About Coffee in 1922 (revised and reissued in 1933). 
It was a scholarly work covering all aspects of coffee, history, growing, 
processing, production, and making the cup of coffee.  The original work is 
packed with fact, fable and statistics.  Most importantly, it had a large 
bibliography covering the sources.  It is, in my opinion, the most complete 
work ever produced on the subject.

The Adams Media edition dumps the bibliography and most of the facts in 
favor of the apocryphal and the anecdotal.  It's fun, cute, easy to read and 
pretty much worthless for any serious consideration of coffee as a 
historical beverage.  If you are truly interested in the subject, don't 
waste your money on this edition, find one of the originals from the Tea and 
Coffee Trade Journal, which also published Ukers' All About Tea (a worthy 
volume on that subject).

Bear