Caffeine

How coffee and tea created the modern world

Acclaimed author and journalist Michael Pollan—whose number-one New York Times best sellers include The Omnivore’s Dilemma and How to Change Your Mind—offers his latest, provocative look into the profound ways that what we eat affects how we live. In Caffeine: How coffee and tea created the modern world, Pollan calls caffeine “the most-used drug in the world”—one we give our children in the form of soda and consume ourselves in multiple daily doses of tea or coffee. Caffeine, it turns out, has changed the course of human history: Pollan’s reporting explores how caffeine has won and lost wars, changed politics, and dominated economies. He asserts, with the support of voluminous research, that the Industrial Revolution would have been impossible without it. The science behind caffeine addiction forms the fascinating backdrop to this definitive look at an insidious drug that hides in plain sight. With his wide-ranging talent to entertain, inform, and perform, Michael Pollan’s Caffeine is essential listening in a world where an estimated two billion cups of coffee are consumed every day.