Here are 100 books that The World of the Paris Café fans have personally recommended if you like
The World of the Paris Café.
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I went to college in Portland, Oregon when the Pacific northwest’s coffee boom was just getting started. My love of coffee turned academic as I began to research and write what would turn out to be a prize-winning book on the early history of coffee and coffeehouses in Great Britain: The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse (2005). I’ve continued to publish articles on coffee history and the history of sociability ever since, and I regularly teach a research seminar on the history of coffee at McGill University. Now I serve as president of the board of directors for an international research group on the history of sociability.
Mintz’s book is about sugar, but it is still a key work in the history of coffee. It served as one of the major inspirations for my own study of the reception of coffee in early modern Britain. Sugar was a key ingredient in coffee by the later seventeenth century and would become a staple in the hot drinks consumed by the English working class. Mintz shows us how this symbiotic relationship between sugar and coffee developed, and he places the construction of an Atlantic slave system and the industrial revolution at the heart of his story. This is a classic work of both anthropology and history; it inspired a whole new way of thinking about the Atlantic world and the history of consumption at a time when both of those fields were still newborn.
A fascinating persuasive history of how sugar has shaped the world, from European colonies to our modern diets
In this eye-opening study, Sidney Mintz shows how Europeans and Americans transformed sugar from a rare foreign luxury to a commonplace necessity of modern life, and how it changed the history of capitalism and industry. He discusses the production and consumption of sugar, and reveals how closely interwoven are sugar's origins as a "slave" crop grown in Europe's tropical colonies with is use first as an extravagant luxury for the aristocracy, then as a staple of the diet of the new industrial…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I have found coffee, or in fact just about any aspect of it, from pour-over to espresso, to be endlessly challenging and rewarding. My first visit to coffee farms was in 2004, to Ethiopia and Kenya. Since then I’ve been to dozens of farms in nine or ten countries. There is something about coffee people; they are wondrously generous about sharing their expertise, if they think you care and if you know the right questions to ask. Before going deeply into coffee, I was a professor of history, and I've continued to publish on topics as diverse as Stalin, the witch hunts in Europe and North America, and the body in the Anglosphere, 1880-1920.
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.
Coffee is a global beverage: it is grown commercially on four continents, and consumed enthusiastically in all seven. There is even an Italian espresso machine on the International Space Station. Coffee's journey has taken it from the forests of Ethiopia to the fincas of Latin America, from Ottoman coffee houses to `Third Wave' cafes, and from the simple coffee pot to the capsule machine. In Coffee: A Global History, Jonathan Morris explains how the world acquired a taste for coffee, yet why coffee tastes so different throughout the world.
Morris discusses who drank coffee, as well as why and where,…
I went to college in Portland, Oregon when the Pacific northwest’s coffee boom was just getting started. My love of coffee turned academic as I began to research and write what would turn out to be a prize-winning book on the early history of coffee and coffeehouses in Great Britain: The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse (2005). I’ve continued to publish articles on coffee history and the history of sociability ever since, and I regularly teach a research seminar on the history of coffee at McGill University. Now I serve as president of the board of directors for an international research group on the history of sociability.
Pinsker’s A Rich Brew combines Jewish history and the literary history of modernist fiction as a way of studying the social history of café culture in five cities with large Jewish populations: Odessa, Warsaw, Vienna, New York City, and Tel Aviv-Jaffa. Café culture from the mid-nineteenth until the mid-twentieth century was particularly associated with Jewry and with modernism. This book helps us understand why this elective affinity between Jews, modernism and coffee developed in the way in which it did. Discerning readers will also find references to loads of novels, stories, and journalism from the era that are worth reading in their own right.
Finalist, 2018 National Jewish Book Award for Modern Jewish Thought and Experience, presented by the Jewish Book Council
Winner, 2019 Jordan Schnitzer Book Award, in the Jewish Literature and Linguistics Category, given by the Association for Jewish Studies
A fascinating glimpse into the world of the coffeehouse and its role in shaping modern Jewish culture
Unlike the synagogue, the house of study, the community center, or the Jewish deli, the cafe is rarely considered a Jewish space. Yet, coffeehouses profoundly influenced the creation of modern Jewish culture from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. With roots stemming from the Ottoman Empire,…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I’ve been working in coffee for nearly 20 years, and teaching people about coffee for most of that. I love sharing how interesting, diverse, and fun the world of coffee is, and I want people to enjoy and value the coffee they drink a little more. It is a passion and a career that’s taken me around the world, and continues to reinforce the idea that just a little effort or interest in your morning coffee has surprisingly large rewards. The books on this list inspired my own passion for coffee and I hope they do the same for you.
This deeper exploration of coffee culture in Japan, a place we all associate with tea, is an interesting and surprising read. The author’s time in Japan serves as the backbone for exploring aspects of gender, perfectionism, and how the cafe in Japan helps people stay punctual.
This fascinating book - part ethnography, part memoir - traces Japan's vibrant cafe society over one hundred and thirty years. Merry White traces Japan's coffee craze from the turn of the twentieth century, when Japan helped to launch the Brazilian coffee industry, to the present day, as uniquely Japanese ways with coffee surface in Europe and America. White's book takes up themes as diverse as gender, privacy, perfectionism, and urbanism. She shows how coffee and coffee spaces have been central to the formation of Japanese notions about the uses of public space, social change, modernity, and pleasure. White describes how…
In my research and teaching, I have long been fascinated with the effects of the French Revolution on France, Europe, and the broader world. In my most recent book, Our Friends the Enemies, I sought to examine the aftermath of the wars provoked by the Revolution, which lasted (with only two short breaks) from 1792 to 1815. In particular, I wanted to reconstruct the story—which had long been overlooked by historians—of the occupation of France by the Allies who defeated Napoleon. Lasting from 1815 to 1818, this occupation was the first modern peacekeeping mission, with profound consequences for the history of France and Europe in the nineteenth century and beyond.
This new collection of essays by an international team of cutting-edge scholars allows readers to see how the French Revolution affected ordinary men and women, in Paris, the French provinces, and the French empire overseas. Treating a broad range of topics—from female activism to property, justice, medicine, food, material culture, childhood, religion, and war—these essays collectively paint a vivid picture of everyday life during this tumultuous period. Each essay is accompanied by a primary document from the time, which enables readers to see for themselves the kinds of sources on which historians rely in their work. Inspired by innovative historiographical approaches to spaces, emotions, and artifacts, Life in Revolutionary France paves the way for new research into the everyday experience of revolution.
The French Revolution brought momentous political, social, and cultural change. Life in Revolutionary France asks how these changes affected everyday lives, in urban and rural areas, and on an international scale.
An international cast of distinguished academics and emerging scholars present new research on how people experienced and survived the revolutionary decade, with a particular focus on individual and collective agency as discovered through the archival record, material culture, and the history of emotions. It combines innovative work with student-friendly essays to offer fresh perspectives on topics such as:
* Political identities and activism * Gender, race, and sexuality *…
Historical novels, movies, and TV shows have captured my interest even as a child since the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder and A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. My love of history has sent me into historic schoolhouses, churches, castles, pirate ships, ancient Roman spas and aqueducts, and other historical sites at home and in England, Spain, and Portugal, as well as pouring over journals, biographies, and non-fiction research books. My first love is Regency England, but I have a fascination for history of all eras and countries. My passion and fascination for detail have been the driving force behind my twenty-four published Regency romances and hundreds of articles and blog posts.
A fun twist on one of my favorite historical tales,The Scarlet Pimpernel, this novel portrays the elusive hero as a brilliant, determined woman. The cast of characters is full and well-developed, including a dashing hero worthy of our heroine’s love. This story is beautifully written, has plenty of twists and turns, heart-melting romance, and a delightful happily ever after.
The roads in and out of Paris are heavily guarded, but the dead have easy passage out of the city. A ragged old woman transports the coffins of the most recent victims of the guillotine and is waved on unimpeded. Later, the same crone watches five French aristocrats step out of their coffins unscathed. Not beheaded, but spirited away to safety by that most elusive of spies: the Pimpernel. Or, as she’s known in polite society, Lady Scarlet Cavendish.
When not assuming her secret identity as a hero of the French Revolution, Scarlet presents herself as a fashionable, featherbrained young…
A fake date, romance, and a conniving co-worker you'd love to shut down. Fun summer reading!
Liza loves helping people and creating designer shoes that feel as good as they look. Financially overextended and recovering from a divorce, her last-ditch opportunity to pitch her firm for investment falls flat. Then…
Growing up in theatre, I was completely immersed in plays, which tend to be deep dives of the human psyche, and I latched on to those examinations like a dog with a bone. I’ve always loved the complexities of the human mind, specifically how we so desperately want to believe that anything beautiful, expensive, or exclusive must mean that the person, place, or thing is of more value. But if we pull back the curtain, and really take a raw look, we see that nothing is exempt from smudges of ugliness. It’s the ugliness, especially in regard to human character, that I find most fascinating.
This book perfectly showcases how, for centuries, people have been fascinated by the seediness that potentially lurks behind the rich and powerful. And wow, is this book saturated with seediness?
While the complete disregard for another human’s existence and happiness is at the forefront of it and is presented as the focus of the story itself, I found myself understanding that it is also a cautionary tale on why these heinous behaviors cannot be allowed to become commonplace. The fact that these characters remain to be considered heinous gives me hope for the future!
Les Liaisons Dangereuses is a frightening and ultimately scathing portrait of a decadent society that was first published in 1782, only a few years before the French Revolution. At its centre are two aristocrats who were once lovers and who now play a complex game of manipulation and seduction to liven up their dreary lives. The Vicomte de Valmont is tasked by the Marquise de Merteuil with seducing an innocent convent girl, but he is equally focused on a righteous married woman. The results, however, turn out to be more dire and fatal than Merteuil and Valmont could have imagined…
I have lived in Gettysburg, PA, all of my life, so I’m drawn to historical fiction, especially the Civil War era. The 1860s is the perfect setting for the enemies-to-lovers trope, and I am lucky enough to be surrounded by history all of the time. In doing lots of research, I have found that enemies fell in love more often than you might think during the Civil War. I hope you enjoy this list of books that got me interested in reading and continue to keep my attention to this day.
My grandmother had this novel on her bookshelf, which is why I read it the first time, but I’ve read it over and over. This is my favorite classic love story that is not really enemies to lovers, but still has lots of emotion and conflict.
I love it because of the conflict and for its educational value in teaching about the French Revolution.
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"Vaguely she began to wonder ... which of these worldly men round her was the mysterious 'Scarlet Pimpernel,' who held the threads of such daring plots, and the fate of valuable lives in his hands."
In the early days of the bloody French Revolution, fleeing aristocrats are being captured and sent to the guillotine. But the mysterious Scarlet Pimpernel - along with his band of English gentlemen - is outwitting the revolutionaries. Known only by his calling card, he arrives in disguise and smuggles the nobles out of…
I have spent much of my adult life studying the French Revolution with students who, like me, are engrossed by the drama, successes and tragedies of the Revolution, and the scale of the attempts to arrest or reverse it. Why and how did an apparently stable regime collapse in 1789? Why did it prove to be so difficult to stabilize a new order? How could claims to “liberty” and “equality” be balanced? And why was there a period of “terror” in 1793-94? When the Revolution was finally over, how had France and other parts of the world been changed? The answers to those questions remain open and continue to fascinate.
The elation of the revolutionary months of May-October 1789 was soon replaced by fervent debate about whose revolution this was to be. This was a debate which involved people at every level of society across the new nation. How could the divergent hopes of middle-class politicians and officials, insurgent Parisians, and the divergent mass of the peasantry be reconciled? Others rejected the Revolution altogether. After 1792 the debate became deadly as a European coalition made war on France, often with the collaboration of internal counter-revolutionaries. David Andress has created a vivid and expert narrative of an unfolding struggle over the survival and meaning of the Revolution, with some surprising conclusions.
The French Revolution of 1789 was the central event of modern history. Although the Revolution started with the resistance of a minority to absolutist government, it soon spread to involve the whole nation, including the men and women who made up by far the largest part of it - the peasantry, as well as townspeople and craftsmen, the poor and those living on the margins of society. The French Revolution and the People is a portrait of the common people of France, in the towns and in the countryside; in Paris and Lyon; in the Vendee, Brittany, Provence. Popular grievances…
“Rowdy” Randy Cox, a woman staring down the barrel of retirement, is a curmudgeonly blue-collar butch lesbian who has been single for twenty years and is trying to date again.
At the end of a long, exhausting shift, Randy finds her supervisor, Bryant, pinned and near death at the warehouse…
I have been fascinated by Napoleon and the French Revolution since I was a teenager. Novels that capture the essence of the struggles of the French people – and especially those that feature Napoleon as a highly layered character – have always called to me. As a Jewish author, I am particularly drawn to a fair representation of Jewish characters in these tales – which frankly, Georgette Heyer does not, as she adheres to stereotypes in describing any Jewish characters. (I only forgive her because her books are so brilliant.)
A thrilling and fully immersive description of the French Revolution; I loved this book in particular for its moving description of how the Jews of Paris were affected.
I found Madame Tussand’s story to be a wonderful frame for the upheaval in France at the time – especially as a highly layered, wonderful character whose strong personality helped her to survive troubling times.
It’s definitely my favorite Michelle Moran book – and that’s tough, considering how many amazing historical novels she’s written.
