Coffeeland

One Man's Dark Empire and the Making of Our Favorite Drug

De: Augustine Sedgewick

Narrado por: Jason Culp

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice

“Extremely wide-ranging and well researched . . . In a tradition of protest literature rooted more in William Blake than in Marx.” —Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker

The epic story of how coffee connected and divided the modern world

Coffee is an indispensable part of daily life for billions of people around the world. But few coffee drinkers know this story. It centers on the volcanic highlands of El Salvador, where James Hill, born in the slums of Manchester, England, founded one of the world’s great coffee dynasties at the turn of the twentieth century. Adapting the innovations of the Industrial Revolution to plantation agriculture, Hill helped turn El Salvador into perhaps the most intensive monoculture in modern history—a place of extraordinary productivity, inequality, and violence. In the process, both El Salvador and the United States earned the nickname “Coffeeland,” but for starkly different reasons, and with consequences that reach into the present.

Provoking a reconsideration of what it means to be connected to faraway people and places, Coffeeland tells the hidden and surprising story of one of the most valuable commodities in the history of global capitalism.

Slow burn

Started off bored for the first few pages, but then expanded and ventured into unexpected directions

Superb history

Lively book that relates a grand historical narrative spanning a century+ using one export crop, coffee, and one family as a central focus. I loved it!

A must read for every coffee drinker!

From now on, I will never see or drink my cup of coffee the same way I did before.

I love coffee

A absorbing story of coffee in El Salvador from the early days of an English settler to the struggle of the poor native workers trying to eke out life on the plantations.
It isn’t a pretty history but thanks to one family member we can learn.

Came to learn of coffee, learned so much MORE!

I am a Christ-follower with a desire to make this world a better place. While I am an outsider to the hospitality supply chain of coffee from earth to cup to lips, I see a great opportunity to utilize this gracious beverage as a vehicle to impact lives for the better through discipleship. Visit our FB page, International Coffee Cooperative, to join in the conversation and add your perspective.

Reading this coffee history and it's focus on the Hill family and El Salvador, I have been blessed seeing the struggle of others and some triumphs we have gained as a history of relationships and labor and comfort. This book has been a useful education into the scene behind the sip...and like Jaime Hill, I will never be the same.

I highly recommend this book! The thorough research and depth of the coffee story is highly beneficial to our understanding of what we as consumers enjoy because of the work of others.

I listened to the Audible version but plan to buy the hardbound book for my library.

2 Stories in One

This book is amazing! It tells the story of coffee and of United States history. I learned about how US citizens treated Latin Americans in their own countries. I learned about the many good things that President Hoover did. I learned about the science behind coffee and caffeine. There is so much here in just-One book.

Rough start, but gets better

Starts out a bit rough. Lots of disparate annecdotes that don't seem to be relevant. If you stick with it, the second half is more engaging.

Informative!

I read this in 2025 as Trump disappears our neighbors to mega-prisons in El Salvador. This book provides important context to why that’s even possible, especially as a daily coffee-drinker. While I expected that the US would have backed various Salvadoran dictatorships, I was surprised by how intrinsically tied the Salvadoran and US economies are.

The author can be a bit verbose at times, and I would have appreciated more information about the period from the Civil War - the present. Still, this provided a thorough history of the El Salvador, coffee production, & coffee consumption.

revealing

Well told, and an interesting story. The history is fascinating, something everyone who has experienced coffee should know.

Superb narration by Jason Culp

An important story, and the narration by Jason Culp is excellent. The issues are important and troubling.