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

The history of coffee in El Salvador is a mighty dark roast. With energy, precision, and authentic pronunciations, Jason Culp skillfully narrates the story of coffee baron James Hill and his merciless creation of a monoculture in El Salvador. Hill destroys the vegetable gardens of locals to ensure they will need to work on his coffee plantations and then pays them partly in tortillas and beans. Culp conveys the horror of the systematic slaughter of Indians and the determination of leftist activists who advocate for better wages and conditions. COFFEELAND is a complicated saga that gets a bit confusing as the author segues into the origin of workplace coffee breaks, studies of metabolism, and the rise of supermarkets. Culp ensures that listeners stay with it. A.B. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine [Published: SEPTEMBER 2020]