PositiveThe Irish TimesCoffee: there have been more books written about the black stuff than you’d imagine ... Few, however, have captured the mucky residue of exploitation resting in your cup of joe as effectively as Augustine Sedgewick’s Coffeeland ... The book is essentially a modern history of El Salvador ... If Coffeeland leans at times toward a hoary humble-immigrant-to-big-shot narrative reminiscent of The Godfather Part II, Sedgewick checks this tendency by anchoring the story in the overarching contexts of an expanding global marketplace and early US imperialism ... Coffeeland – Sedgewick’s debut monograph – is at times overly didactic. In labouring the (very valid) contrast between the mundanity of the morning coffee and the nightmare of its productive process, the author occasionally over-steeps the brew. Yet the book succeeds in highlighting the gory realities underlying globalised consumption in the form of a character-rich national history of El Salvador ... In capturing the 20th-century tragedy of a small corner of that world through a breakfast staple, Coffeeland is a bittersweet triumph.
