100 Books Like Coffee Is Not Forever

Jonathan, with whom I worked on an earlier book on coffee with authors from around the world, presents the history of coffee in a wonderfully readable way. His book is filled with charming and informative photos and graphics. A professor at the University of Hertfordshire and a truly nice guy, Jonathan is an expert above all on Italian coffee. He is in demand, particularly for talks on coffee’s past and present in Europe.

Anyone who would like to understand how coffee flavors develop, which is key to raising your level of sophistication about coffee, should pick up this book. Roasting green coffee beans is an art and science for which people are always trying new methods. The Book of Roast provides a detailed look at the history of roasting, from stovetop to massive machines, and tells why the best roaster takes such meticulous care in handling the beans. The latest and best methods of roasting and preparing coffee beverages are covered. In places, the book becomes a bit technically challenging, but it remains quite readable. For me, it was a great exploration of science plus taste. As one coffee expert put it to me, you can reveal the flavors in good beans (and you can ruin them quickly while roasting), but you can never improve upon them.

The speciality coffee industry is now a mature global part of coffee culture, but this book captures the early excitement around it as it burst onto the global stage. How coffee companies sought out and bought coffee was completely rewritten during this time, and this book makes for a fascinating read.

Coffee, sex, travel, exotic locales, romance, and at long last love. This novel has it all, made vivid through the story of a more or less ordinary Englishman in the late 1890s who finds that he has a remarkable talent for discovering and describing the flavors and the problems in brewed coffee. He goes to Ethiopia to learn more about coffee. There his adventures become, shall we say, quite vivid, and some remarkable twists appear. Nicely written by an international best-selling author. Used copies are really cheap. You will have fun reading this with a great cup of coffee.

Should one species dominate half the entire planet? To some that seems greedy, but others think it’s not enough.

This book suggests a middle way: half the planet for us, but no more. It’s the most sumptuous book on my list, and even comes with an online game (which my students enjoyed playing in class). The book blends fictional passages with socio-ecological analysis. One fantasy paints a disturbingly plausible eco-dystopia, another portrays an attractive utopia—a future where people develop forms of democratic planning to enable rich human lives amidst flourishing fauna and flora.

Along the way, Vettese and Pendergrass introduce us to a galaxy of visionaries—from William Morris to Otto Neurath to Ursula Le Guin—who have developed ideas and planning techniques that could make that utopia real.

A friend recommended this slim book of 100 pages that poses a profound and direct question: How should we live in the end times when the climate crisis threatens our very existence? How can we garner the moral courage to live with the responsibility our times demand of us—as individuals and in collective? These are heavy queries but the philosophical and poetic lens of the authors opens that space to approach the challenge with more grace than fear. Plus, it’s a book that can fit in your back pocket, perfect for walks outside when you’re thinking about life and death in uncertain times. 

I picked up this book as research but I kept reading because it was fascinating.

I admire Greenpeace a great deal, and their style of direct action—they’re known for activists tying themselves to oil rigs or swarms of kayaks blockading ports to make a point—is a touchpoint for the activist organization in my series.

Willcox’s memoir about captaining one of Greenpeace’s famous ships often reads like a thriller, complete with chase scenes trying to escape the Russian military, and some of the anecdotes fall into the “truth stranger than fiction” category.

A very cool look at some impressive real-life activism that’s not wonky or preachy.

Reading Material Value will deepen your understanding of how everyday products are made, motivate you to make more informed consumer choices, and inspire you to advocate for more sustainable and less wasteful manufacturing practices. Seems like a lot, doesn’t it?

But the book is jam-packed with detailed information helping the reader to appreciate what is required to make the products we use daily. In addition, I appreciate how the author gives the background information from a fair standpoint and emphasizes that cooperation and open communication are preferable strategies for change than direct confrontational tactics.

While bad companies do exist, more often than not, other circumstances impede companies from acting in a more ethical manner.

Earth Emotions is a landmark guide to new concepts and vocabulary to represent the complex new ‘eco-emotions’, a spectrum of positive and negative emotional responses caused by recent environmental and life changes. From a mental health perspective to social sustainability, this book is valuable for many people currently processing their eco-emotions. One lesson from my research journey is that emotion and shared empathy as forms of sustainability knowledge are underestimated in favor of more rational approaches, when affect and cognition are intrinsically linked. This book advances our understanding of holistic emotions as sustainable information. Having conducted research into knowledge ecosystems, I can relate to the proposed shift from the Human Age (anthropocene) of isolation and despair to a Symbiotic Age (symbiocene) defined by positive mutually beneficial relationships between different groups.

Edmund Russell has a challenging approach to History. He wants histories of human societies and animals to be written together.

It is uncontroversial that humans shaped domestic and farm animals, but Russell contends that these animals have shaped human societies, in a process he terms coevolution.

This fascinating book reveals the coevolution of greyhounds and humans. Greyhounds were created with the physique and speed to catch hares on country estates. Then in the nineteenth century, through organized coursing events and dog shows, greyhounds became standardized and more uniform in look.

The new greyhounds created new social roles through the democratization of greyhound ownership and new recreational opportunities. Coursing was reinvented in the twentieth century as greyhound racing, an innovative mass urban entertainment, where dogs chased electrically powered hares in a floodlit spectacle.