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The Coffee Chronicles: A Deep Journey into the Alchemy, Obsession, and Global Empires of Coffee
“An epic look at coffee... Ambitious and often revelatory, Lee’s work turns a simple morning ritual into something profound.” — Kirkus Reviews
Coffee began as a wild shrub in the forests of Ethiopia. Sufi worshippers in Yemen drank it to stay awake through night prayers. Within a few centuries it was being smuggled across oceans, grown on plantations worked by enslaved people, and priced on a futures exchange in New York. Today more than two billion cups are poured every day, and very few of the people drinking them know how the trade works.
The Coffee Chronicles, the follow-up to The Cacao Chronicles, tells that story. Author and executive Josh Lee traces how one seed passed through the ports of Yemen, the coffeehouses of the Enlightenment, and the factories of the Industrial Revolution, and how it ended up on the farms of Panama, where some of the most expensive coffee in the world is grown. The book covers the history of the trade, the economics behind the price of a cup, and the science of what happens between the farm and the espresso machine.
Inside, you will
The Pilgrim and the How Baba Budan, a Sufi pilgrim, carried seven fertile seeds out of Yemen strapped to his stomach and broke its hold on the trade. Also how the French naval officer Gabriel de Clieu shared his own water ration to keep a single coffee plant alive on the crossing to Martinique.The Price of a How the coffee “C” price is set on the New York futures market, and why a $5.50 latte returns about four cents to the farmer who grew the beans. Also how the “smile curve” shows where the money in the supply chain ends up.The Chemistry of the What happens to the bean inside the roaster, what controls extraction in a shot of espresso, and how caffeine acts on the body. Also why the plant makes caffeine at as a defense against insects.The Future of the How climate change threatens the regions where arabica grows, and why growers are taking a new look at Coffea liberica, a larger and hardier species that was once set aside. Also a look at lab-grown coffee, made from plant cells cultured in steel tanks without a single tree.For anyone who drinks coffee every day, this book explains where it comes from, how it is priced, and what it takes to grow it.
Coffee began as a wild shrub in the forests of Ethiopia. Sufi worshippers in Yemen drank it to stay awake through night prayers. Within a few centuries it was being smuggled across oceans, grown on plantations worked by enslaved people, and priced on a futures exchange in New York. Today more than two billion cups are poured every day, and very few of the people drinking them know how the trade works.
The Coffee Chronicles, the follow-up to The Cacao Chronicles, tells that story. Author and executive Josh Lee traces how one seed passed through the ports of Yemen, the coffeehouses of the Enlightenment, and the factories of the Industrial Revolution, and how it ended up on the farms of Panama, where some of the most expensive coffee in the world is grown. The book covers the history of the trade, the economics behind the price of a cup, and the science of what happens between the farm and the espresso machine.
Inside, you will
The Pilgrim and the How Baba Budan, a Sufi pilgrim, carried seven fertile seeds out of Yemen strapped to his stomach and broke its hold on the trade. Also how the French naval officer Gabriel de Clieu shared his own water ration to keep a single coffee plant alive on the crossing to Martinique.The Price of a How the coffee “C” price is set on the New York futures market, and why a $5.50 latte returns about four cents to the farmer who grew the beans. Also how the “smile curve” shows where the money in the supply chain ends up.The Chemistry of the What happens to the bean inside the roaster, what controls extraction in a shot of espresso, and how caffeine acts on the body. Also why the plant makes caffeine at as a defense against insects.The Future of the How climate change threatens the regions where arabica grows, and why growers are taking a new look at Coffea liberica, a larger and hardier species that was once set aside. Also a look at lab-grown coffee, made from plant cells cultured in steel tanks without a single tree.For anyone who drinks coffee every day, this book explains where it comes from, how it is priced, and what it takes to grow it.
634 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 14, 2026
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March 24, 2026
This is wonderful, comprehensive, near encyclopedic on the subject, book about a magic fruit. If you love coffee but don’t know much about it, be prepared to learn. A lot. If you love coffee and do know a lot about it, I expect you will learn things, too. I will never be an expert, but I make more than a casual study of it, and I learned quite a bit. For example,on page 61,
“Almost all the coffee in the Americas (the Typica variety) is descended from that one tree in the Amsterdam greenhouse. The genetic diversity of Latin American coffee is effectively zero. It is an inbred lineage. The billions of trees in Brazil and Colombia are all clones of the Amsterdam Patriarch.”
Mr. Lee shares the story of how that came to be. Along with so much more. You get*: history, biology, taxonomy, chemistry, geography, geology, ecology, politics, economics, climate, environment, genetics, thermodynamics, fluid flow, hydrology, processing, roasting, deceptive roasting (“high yield”), marketing (which could be a deception), grinding,… and brewing, of course. Oh, and tasting, evaluating, grading; coffee meccas around the world to visit.
And humor! I chuckled out loud when I read this on page 192: “The most common grinder in the Western household is the blade grinder, a device that operates less like a tool and more like a crime scene.”
I’ve got some work to do to improve my coffee experience. Getting the right mineral content in the brew water is essential… if you have the time and resources. I’ve been doing it all wrong, which means the excellent coffee I already brew can be even better! Thankfully, you’ll read the scientific recipe for the perfect brewing water. And I’m visiting Panama in June… perhaps I can find some Panamanian Geisha (more probable than not, any would be waaaay too expensive.)
Excellent book. I received a digital review copy of this from the author through BookSirens, and definitely want a hardcopy for my library.
A few more curations of my many annotations:
[on Robusta] Page 131, “For decades, Italian roasters like Lavazza navigated this balance with secrecy and skill. They utilized high-quality "Washed Robusta"”
{I admit an aversion to Robusta, but now I must check out Lavazza. I may have had some when I was in Italy, but I don’t know for sure.}
[on raosting] Page 186, “THE AGTRON TRUTH The definitions of "Dark" or "Light" [roast] are subjective.” [The Agtron is a spectrophotometer that measures the color of the roast.]
{I recently unscientifically examined three different “medium” roasts, side by side with a “light” and a “medium dark”, all Ethiopian. For the mediums, the color differential ranged from nearer to “light” and to nearer to medium-dark, and the flavors, of course, differed.}
[on grinding] Page 194 “An inferior grinder generates a wide, flat curve, producing large chunks and microscopic dust simultaneously. This inconsistency is the antagonist of flavor.
A superior grinder produces a narrow particle distribution (unimodal), minimizing both dust and boulders.
The boulders under-extract; the water cannot penetrate to the center, contributing
sour, grassy flavors. The fines over-extract; they dissolve instantly, contributing bitter, astringent, and dry sensations. A poor grind guarantees a cup that is flawed in two directions at once.”
{I have a pretty good conical burr grinder and no desire to drop the $$€¥£ for a flat burr grinder, and with no rich uncles to help… sigh.}
[evolution of consumption] page 8 “Ancient Ethiopian warriors and nomadic traders developed what was essentially the world's first energy bar. They would take the ripe coffee cherries, crush them—seeds, pulp, skin, and all—and mix the resulting paste with animal fat (usually ghee) to create dense,spherical rations.
These high-calorie, high-caffeine spheres [crushed ripe cherries mixed with animal fat], sometimes called goli, were the perfect travel food. The fat provided long-burning calories for the hike, while the caffeine from the raw coffee fruit provided an immediate and sustained stimulant effect, suppressing hunger and warding off exhaustion during multi-day treks or military campaigns.”
{Interesting. Cacao was first a drink, then a food. Coffee first a food, then drink.}
[water, water everywhere, let’s make it a drop to drink] Page 219, "The Role of Dissolved Cations in Coffee Extraction," by Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood & Dr. Christopher Hendon
{find this paper}
Page 220, “To brewcoffee, we need impurities. But we need a very specific kind of impurity.”
* [follow on to what you get] What you don’t get are specific citations to follow up on your own. However…there is a very good selected bibliography, a few of which I’ve read and know to be rather comprehensive themselves, but few references in the narrative to tie to specific sources. I always want in-text callouts, but no matter what, there is something here for everyone. And I highly recommend Mr. Lee’s The Cacao Chronicles, a similarly written story of the source of chocolate.
“Almost all the coffee in the Americas (the Typica variety) is descended from that one tree in the Amsterdam greenhouse. The genetic diversity of Latin American coffee is effectively zero. It is an inbred lineage. The billions of trees in Brazil and Colombia are all clones of the Amsterdam Patriarch.”
Mr. Lee shares the story of how that came to be. Along with so much more. You get*: history, biology, taxonomy, chemistry, geography, geology, ecology, politics, economics, climate, environment, genetics, thermodynamics, fluid flow, hydrology, processing, roasting, deceptive roasting (“high yield”), marketing (which could be a deception), grinding,… and brewing, of course. Oh, and tasting, evaluating, grading; coffee meccas around the world to visit.
And humor! I chuckled out loud when I read this on page 192: “The most common grinder in the Western household is the blade grinder, a device that operates less like a tool and more like a crime scene.”
I’ve got some work to do to improve my coffee experience. Getting the right mineral content in the brew water is essential… if you have the time and resources. I’ve been doing it all wrong, which means the excellent coffee I already brew can be even better! Thankfully, you’ll read the scientific recipe for the perfect brewing water. And I’m visiting Panama in June… perhaps I can find some Panamanian Geisha (more probable than not, any would be waaaay too expensive.)
Excellent book. I received a digital review copy of this from the author through BookSirens, and definitely want a hardcopy for my library.
A few more curations of my many annotations:
[on Robusta] Page 131, “For decades, Italian roasters like Lavazza navigated this balance with secrecy and skill. They utilized high-quality "Washed Robusta"”
{I admit an aversion to Robusta, but now I must check out Lavazza. I may have had some when I was in Italy, but I don’t know for sure.}
[on raosting] Page 186, “THE AGTRON TRUTH The definitions of "Dark" or "Light" [roast] are subjective.” [The Agtron is a spectrophotometer that measures the color of the roast.]
{I recently unscientifically examined three different “medium” roasts, side by side with a “light” and a “medium dark”, all Ethiopian. For the mediums, the color differential ranged from nearer to “light” and to nearer to medium-dark, and the flavors, of course, differed.}
[on grinding] Page 194 “An inferior grinder generates a wide, flat curve, producing large chunks and microscopic dust simultaneously. This inconsistency is the antagonist of flavor.
A superior grinder produces a narrow particle distribution (unimodal), minimizing both dust and boulders.
The boulders under-extract; the water cannot penetrate to the center, contributing
sour, grassy flavors. The fines over-extract; they dissolve instantly, contributing bitter, astringent, and dry sensations. A poor grind guarantees a cup that is flawed in two directions at once.”
{I have a pretty good conical burr grinder and no desire to drop the $$€¥£ for a flat burr grinder, and with no rich uncles to help… sigh.}
[evolution of consumption] page 8 “Ancient Ethiopian warriors and nomadic traders developed what was essentially the world's first energy bar. They would take the ripe coffee cherries, crush them—seeds, pulp, skin, and all—and mix the resulting paste with animal fat (usually ghee) to create dense,spherical rations.
These high-calorie, high-caffeine spheres [crushed ripe cherries mixed with animal fat], sometimes called goli, were the perfect travel food. The fat provided long-burning calories for the hike, while the caffeine from the raw coffee fruit provided an immediate and sustained stimulant effect, suppressing hunger and warding off exhaustion during multi-day treks or military campaigns.”
{Interesting. Cacao was first a drink, then a food. Coffee first a food, then drink.}
[water, water everywhere, let’s make it a drop to drink] Page 219, "The Role of Dissolved Cations in Coffee Extraction," by Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood & Dr. Christopher Hendon
{find this paper}
Page 220, “To brewcoffee, we need impurities. But we need a very specific kind of impurity.”
* [follow on to what you get] What you don’t get are specific citations to follow up on your own. However…there is a very good selected bibliography, a few of which I’ve read and know to be rather comprehensive themselves, but few references in the narrative to tie to specific sources. I always want in-text callouts, but no matter what, there is something here for everyone. And I highly recommend Mr. Lee’s The Cacao Chronicles, a similarly written story of the source of chocolate.
May 21, 2026
AI and shallow. As an author on specialty coffee I am annoyed to see AI alop trying to move in. How many times can you label the continent of Africa on the cover in the AI image?
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews