Glass, Paper, Beans: Revelations on the Nature and Value of Ordinary Things

by Leah Hager Cohen

Once upon a time we knew the origins of things: what piece of earth the potato on our dinner plate came from, which well our water was dipped from, who cobbled our shoes, and whose cow provided the leather. In many parts of the world, that information is still readily available. But in our society, even as technology makes certain kinds of information more accessible than ever, other connections are irrevocably lost.

In Glass, Paper, Beans, Leah Cohen traces three simple commodities on their geographic and semantic journey from her rickety table at the Someday Café to their various points of origin. As Cohen draws the reader Oz-like across time and continents, she brings to life three unforgettable characters whose labor provides the glass for her mug, the pulp for her newspaper and the beans for her cup of coffee. In prose as sophisticated as it is simple, she braids the myths, lore, and history of these three simple staples and conjures an unseen world where economics, fetishization, and manufacture meet.

An elegant and inspired inquiry into the true nature of things, Glass, Paper, Beans is a classic work on the economy of everyday life.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Essays

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Leah Hager Cohen has written four non-fiction books, including Train Go Sorry and Glass, Paper, Beans, and four novels, including House Lights and The Grief of Others.

She serves as the Jenks Chair in Contemporary American Letters at the College of the Holy Cross, and teaches in the Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Lesley University. She is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review.

Reviews

[Jim Fonseca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every day the author goes to write in a coffee shop where she has coffee in a glass mug and reads the newspaper – an actual PAPER since this book was published in 1997 before most of us got our news on digital screens.



She traces the origin and the evolution of the three things. Only in the case of paper (Chinese, 150 AD) do we actually have a good idea of where and how it started, so for coffee and glass she offers us a variety of myths and legends from which we can take our pick. “Some of all this is quite possibly true.” Sometimes we know about accoutrements – the glass blowpipe originated in Venice.

She tracks down where her actual items come from. So, we get to meet a woman who works in the Anchor Hocking glass factory in Lancaster, Ohio. We learn about her job as a line supervisor and a bit about her family, dog and troubles. Then we meet a lumberman in New Brunswick who cuts trees for wood pulp. It’s interesting that in both cases the workers hardly handle the product – they operate machinery. In the case of the lumberman he can hardly hear the saw or smell the wood sap from the isolated cab of the truck that operates the machinery.



In Oaxaca Mexico, they still do it the old-fashioned way, picking coffee beans by hand, raking them in the sun to dry, hand-filling burlap bags. These are organic beans produced by a commune. Even the dog that lives in your house isn’t really “your dog” just because you take care of it. These stories of the three people and their families are quite interesting.

The author likes lists: we get lists of things used for money in different societies over history, types of trees, names of lumber equipment, shapes of glasses, things made from paper, etc.

It’s a good book but I get the impression that for some reason the author felt the need to “pad it.” She adds “interludes” of significant events in her childhood. There’s an essay about “time.” Then there’s a long essay titled “The Fetish” about the evolution of currency and how we monetize everything. This chapter can be summarized by one of her passages about sitting in the coffee shop: “Here in the [$300,000], I sit at a [$24.00] on which are laid: a {$1.50]; and a [$.60] filled with [$1.25].” She ties it in Marx’s ideas about the commodification of labor, and some of Thoreau’s writings. But it ends up, I think, overly-simplistic. We all pretty much get how barter evolved into trading coins (or shells or glass beads) and then paper currency came along and then stocks and futures trading, etc., so these 50+pages of the 300-page book kind of drag.



But, the historical info about the development of the products and the life stories of the three individuals and their families bringing them to our tables are worth the price admission.

photos from top:
(Mexico) spilling-the-beans.net
(Washington state) media.columbian.com
(Maine) forestsformainesfuture.org

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read this book in the late 90s and it was a comfort just to read it. I recently felt it calling to me from the shelf and decided to reread it. Basically, it is about commodities and how we view or don't view them. It is an excellent book for today, when everything and sometimes everyone is a commodity. The book tracks three people, one in the logging ( paper) business, one in glass and one in coffee. But between the chapters about these people ( the people behind the commodity) there are essays with titles like Object, Place, Time. But, it is the chapter called Fetish that has really brought it all together for me. It is a powerful little, nondescript book.

[Brenda Royce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this exploration into the origins of the things around us -- in this case, a cup of coffee and the morning paper inspired the author to trace the glass of the mug, coffee beans, and paper to their source. We meet the often extraordinary people involved in the creation of each item-- tobacco farmers, glass workers, etc. What may seem mundane is quite fascinating when you scratch the surface.

[Julia MacPherson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid 4.5 and very close to a 5 for me. I love these kinds of books and stories especially when some are close to home!

[Christine · Rating 1 out of 5]

I only read part of this book. I couldn't get through the whole thing. There was something annoying about the author's tone, as if she was trying just a bit too hard to elevate these "everyday" items. By far the best parts were when she focused on the people who worked to make the items (the logger, the people who picked the coffee, the woman who worked at Anchor Hocking), and I began to just skip the chapters to read about the people, but I still couldn't make it through the book. I had heard such good things about this book, that it was disappointing how much I didn't like it.

[Sue Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I needed this book - I needed it's reflections on slowness, the beginnings of things. And Leah Hager Cohen's writing is simply stated - divine. Fluid and interesting and silky smooth, you go down a history lesson hall and find things that you either completely forgot or that you suddenly see in a whole new light. It was fun and enlightening and a wonderful book to wallow in.

Taking the simple enjoyment of having your morning coffee and reading the paper and creating a book out of it is quite a feat! Of course, being that is was written in 1997 when people actually read a physical newspaper and coffee was - more often than not - served in an establishment in a glass mug, this book is almost nostalgic! But the message is still the same - and in some ways, even more important. Knowing the source of your things goes almost hand in hand with knowing the intrinsic value of it - and by understanding the value of the people involved. Not understanding that allows for all the manipulations that unscrupulous people and companies can create.

But the book doesn't talk about that, although it's certainly made explicit in its absence, the author instead focuses on three people in three parts of the world and in the three areas of choice for the story - glass, paper and beans. And she does a masterful job.

I'm going to read other books by Ms Cohen. If they are written anything like this one was, they will be a wonder to delve into.

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is about how we take for granted ordinary things (coffee, in a cup, the morning newspaper) that require real people to work hard to bring those ordinary things to your café table. Cohen goes back to the source, showing us the Mexican coffee farmer, the Ohio woman who supervises a glass factory, and the guy in New Brunswick who uses elaborate heavy machinery to selectively harvest logs, some of which become paper pulp. Cohen shows how savvy each worker is about the jobs they have to do, how dedicated each is to their jobs, even as their labor and expertise are far in the background, unremarked and unappreciated--hence this book.
Cohen juggles three complicated stories, delving into backstories, and doing her best to make clear the details of the jobs these providers do. She frequently indulges in some fine writing, but it is never so overdone that it cloys. She wants to find some poetry in the work she is observing, and she does.
I'll remember the premise of the book--that we need to appreciate all the work needed to bring even the most basic of civilized pleasures to the breakfast table. I will remember the graphic descriptions that concretely evoke the settings in which this work is done: factory floor, bitterly cold Canadian forests, hilly Mexican coffee plots, tended by resilient and resigned peasant farmers.

[Janet Mahlum · Rating 1 out of 5]

This wasn't what I thought it was going to be and it seemed a waste of time to continue reading it. I am in my twilight years with precarious health and have piles of books I want to read and thousands on my want-to-read list. With so many books and so little time, I'm getting impatient. If the book doesn't grab me, it gets to go to Goodwill unfinished.

[Jan Morrison]

A reread of this excellent book. Like John McPhee Cohen brings you into a moment with a precise poetic touch that will fill your heart. What are the human stories behind the everyday commodities that we interact with daily?

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book - years ago.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the look into the lives of real people who make things we use every day, and a journey through what it takes to make them.

[Andrea Keohane · Rating 2 out of 5]

i like the concept but kinda rambled

[Trena · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoy commodity histories so I was drawn to Glass, Paper, Beans as part of that genre. I was disappointed to learn that the "beans" were coffee beans, not edible beans; I don't drink coffee, don't care much about it, and already knew a bit about it from A History of the World in Six Glasses. Much of the information on beans was redundant of Six Glasses, but it turns out this book was written 10 years before Standage's so Cohen can hardly be blamed.

The author's premise was to trace commodities to the real people that produced them, so she followed a woodcutter in Canada who cut trees for paper pulp, a coffee bean farmer in Mexico, and a glass factory supervisor in Ohio for a few days and recorded their daily rhythms. She drew heavily on Marxist philosophy in musing about how commodification intentionally obscures the human hands that shape a product.

Her prose is a little flowery for my taste (and perhaps uncomfortably close to my style, which made it all the more squirmy to read). I was expecting a book of facts and history but it was really neither. At first this was a turnoff but ultimately I enjoyed the book and its encounter with three real people, contrived as it was.

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. The format worked well, stories about who made these three ordinary objects intermixed with Leah Cohen’s moment at a café and her thoughts about the economics of things. She puts added value to these objects by detailing three individuals: Ruth Lamp a supervisor in a glass factory; Brent Boyd who cuts down trees for a living, a third generation woodcutter, but perhaps defies what you’d think of a typical woodsman; and Basilio Salinas one who also lives in a line of coffee growers, but a much longer one, and already passing the tradition onto his six-year-old son, his eldest child. What is Cohen’s solution to money, this abstract that means everything? Perhaps it is only these stories.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so beautifully written you forget that you are reading non-fiction, forget that you are reading at all. The author explores three items from her everyday life: a glass mug, a newspaper, and coffee beans, detailing where they are made, and who touches them before they get to her. What results is a study in class and nationality, a travelogue through the western hemisphere, and a celebration of simple items whose global reach is surprising.

[Valerie · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was hard to choose between three & four stars. I love the principle of the book, it does it well... but it does feel kind of bland & redundant in parts. I don't even know why, it was just hard to pick it back up sometimes. If it's not something that you've really put thought behind before, then you need to read this book, but if the topic is something that has interested you since childhood, well, it's an interesting exercise but won't strike you as compelling.

[Bob]

A truly intriguing book that peels away the layers of separation between the products we take for granted in our everyday lives and the people, places and processes that produce those products. Cohen does a masterful job of weaving three disparate coffee shop items - a glass mug, a newspaper and freshly-brewed coffee - into a book that will take you on exciting journeys.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meditative book about the origins of everyday essentials. This book meanders, but thoughtfully and delightfully. Cohen painted images I will never forget. Also, I will never read a newspaper or book in a coffee shop from a glass mug without thinking of Glass, Paper, Beans. Did I mention how well-written it is? Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

[Katharine Holden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating, well-written book that begins with the author holding a coffee cup and reading a newspaper in a coffee shop, then becomes an exploration of who made that cup, grew that coffee, cranked out that newspaper. It held my attention all the way through. Wonderful book.

[David Robertus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent writing but style at the expense of purposefulness.

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cohen examines the origins in human terms of a newspaper, coffee, and the glass that holds the coffee, while also reflecting on time and place.

[Noelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were moments when my interest was piqued but there were more moments where i had to force myself to keep reading.

[Gina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a wonderful exploration of everyday things -- where they come from and the journey they take to reach us.

[Cecelia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simple, moving, gratitude-provoking.