About this Book

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 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 (or the blood with which they feed the global capitalist vampire, depending on your point of view). In this thought-provoking exposé, Antony 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. To many people, coffee has become largely just another commodity. Black Gold restores our faith in the mystery of this unique beverage.