Informational and interesting. A trip to another culture and way of life I never realized I had not seen until now. Highly recommend for the coffee lover in your life, especially the one who enjoys traveling.

5 out of 5 from me!

Coffee. I can take it or leave it. However, friends who feel like caffeine addicts were very interested in this book. It made a great gift for them.

This is a book for coffee lovers
I quite enjoyed learning about the origins of coffee and how it spread across the world, evolving into what it is today. However, there was just something about it all that just didn't fascinate me. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who is much more attuned with coffee consumption and culture than I am.

Being the coffee lover that I am, reading this book was a no-brainer for me. I love coffee and I was super interested to find out more about its history and production. Jeff Koehler brings to light the secret world of coffee production, and brings you behind the scenes to the sometimes secretive and shady, but ever lucrative, coffee business. I give this book four stars - the information was very interesting and enlightening, but the story lagged in a few parts. However, I definitely recommend pushing through any slow moving parts because the payoff is worth it! Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me a digital copy for honest review.

I adore coffee. I love it hot or cold, morning or night. When I found this book I just knew I had to read it.

It starts out in Ethiopia where the coffee literally grows wild. It talks about how much coffee has changed their area of the world, even their culture. It goes on to explain its travel around the world until the way coffee is loved throughout the globe today.

This would be a great book for any fellow coffee lover or anyone who is interested in the history of this amazing drink.

Where the Wild Coffee Grows by Jeff Koehler promises the "Untold Story of Coffee". Mr. Koehler definitely delivers. While a bit slow at times, it covers everything from the beginning of coffee in the wild to the problems it faces today. I particularly enjoyed reading about the culture of Ethiopia and how this region shaped the coffee we love today. If you are interested in learning more about coffee, this book is the one to read!

Incredibly researched look into the history of the coffee bean - as a coffee lover, I greatly appreciated it! I really enjoyed reading about the history of coffee which goes all the way up to present time. Parts of the book are somewhat slow (it's a very, very non-fiction look) but definitely worth reading.

Those of us who rely on coffee for our caffeine boosts probably take the plant for granted, especially in the coffee-driven culture of the US. It's easy to pop into the corner coffee store for a refill or pick up any variety of bagged coffee at the grocery store. And while many of us probably like our flavored coffees--caramel or hazelnut or any of the many seasonal flavors--we never really think about the flavor of the coffee itself.

While I find straight black coffee simply too bitter for my tastes (at bare minimum, I require sugar), reading this book made me want to power through the bitterness and try and taste the flavor of the actual, pure coffee.

This book starts out in Ethiopia, where, as the title says, the wild coffee grows. As far as scientists can tell, this is where coffee originated and where it still thrives (although in much smaller areas) today. Koehler provides an extensive history of the importance of the native coffee plants to the local population. Not only has coffee been a staple in Ethiopia's trade since medieval times, but it has affected every aspect of their culture as well. The lengthy coffee preparation is just as important as actually drinking the final brewed cup, and coffee being brewed is a sort of aromatic welcome mat, encouraging people to stop in for a cup.

Koehler also dives into just how nuanced coffee flavors can be. Everything in the process, from the altitude and climate of the coffee tree, to how the beans are picked and processed, to how they're ground and what water is used to brew them can affect the final flavor of a cup of joe. This finickiness of the flavor, however, can cause problems when coffee beans are mass produced for consumption, where brands want their flavors to always stay the same. As climate makes for more limited growing opportunities, and leaf rust continues to be an issue in the Arabica species, it can start to be more and more difficult to produce the same coffee beans in the same environment and get that same flavor.

This isn't to say that coffee can't adapt. In fact, it seems to be quite hardy in the right overall environment, especially Robusta (the oft-shunned species of coffee, typically used for instant coffees). However, as the coffee would adapt, so would the beans, their caffeine content, and their end flavor. While beans of many flavors can be mixed to create a blend, if even one of those beans' flavors changes, the overall flavor could also change.

I quite enjoyed learning about the origins of coffee and how it spread across the world, evolving into what it is today. However, there was just something about it all that just didn't fascinate me. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who is much more attuned with coffee consumption and culture than I am.

As a self-proclaimed coffee achiever, I really enjoyed this book. I loved reading the history and culture of coffee. I found the book to be a little slow moving at times but, still, very interesting and worth the read. An ode to my favorite beverage. Well done!

I'm not much of a coffee drinker myself, but have folks who are both among family and friends. For those diehards- they will love this book! loaded with coffee facts and history. For the rest of us, interesting read!

Everything you've ever wanted to know about coffee - from it's history to where it's grown to how it's grown to how it ends up in my thermos every morning to keep me awake at work. Some very serious nonfiction here (full disclosure: I thought this was going to be a cookbook for coffee. Turns out it was not, but still very interesting).

"Where the Wild Coffee Grows" takes us on a well-researched trek through the history of the coffee, bringing together the writings of explorers and historians as well as first hand accounts from living farmers, scientists, and magnates of the coffee industry. The journey begins in the forests of Ethiopia, where communities view the coffee preparation ritual as a social activity, an expression of their spiritual connection with nature. Then we follow the beans as they make their way into the Middle East and Europe through conquest and trade. We end in the modern era, riding the wave of mass-consumption and artisanal quality in a globalized market. Yet ominous clouds of issues billow ahead, threatening the natural existence of our favorite beverage: the steadily changing climate, the spread of fungal blights, and the unfortunate homogeneity of coffee-plant genetics leave the future uncertain.

As Colombian-American, coffee is quite literally my lifeblood. I felt like I owed it to my multi-cup-a-day habit to learn a bit more about this precious beverage, and I found the history of mankind's relationship with this bean to be fascinating. The first few chapters were a bit long-winded and overly detailed while excavating the history of Ethiopian politics, tangential to the story at hand. But once the text returned to the global impact of coffee and threats to its future, the book was hard to put down. The perspectives compiled for this work will appeal to coffee snobs and scientists alike, though honestly anyone with a taste for the black gold will enjoy reading up on its past, present and future.

A true love letter to the birthplace of coffee and our love affair with the drink. I loved this book, i learned so much about ethiopia as the birthplace of coffee and the people who bring it to market. I also learned about the way coffee has spread around the world and how the world loves and consumes such a ubiquitous beverage.

So interesting! Who knew there was so much to coffee!?!

This is a very fun and information-packed micro-history, which might very well be best enjoyed while relaxing with a cup of the very same ubiquitous bean-based beverage that the book centers on!