I liked this book because it makes a good showing on my shelf. People at my house say "Akmed, you are a coffee chemist?" I say, "yes, everything coffee does for me this book can undo. Ever drank too much coffee and can't sleep? This book solves that problem! Sleep for days after reading this book! I did. And you can too." One of my friends borrowed the book just before she quit coffee and died of severe depression. I'm not saying she read the book, but carrying it around seem to have the same effect. I hope everyone with too much time and energy will read this book, as they too will suffer a lingering malaise.

Not a casual read in any sense of the word. This book is written for chemists and physicists. However, if you have a burning need for an answer about some technical aspect of what it takes to make espresso and enough time, energy, and/or education to figure out the necessarily scientific explanations, this is the place to find it.

600 recipies ... WHO NEEDS IT ? There is nothing said about the art of making a great espresso, a few useless pages in the begining and that's it. What about all the different types of coffee machines ( piston or pump ? ), the water, the milk ? In the little paragraph about milk, UHT milk used throughout Europe, the land of Espresso, is not even mentioned ... and yes you can make your own UHT milk. There are so many recipes that would make anyone SICK, the awful variations suggested were invented to fill in pages. A barista needs to know how to make good espresso and a few basic coffee drinks, no one needs a book suggesting Marshmellow in a rasberry flavored ... thing, topped with whip cream. Awful. Coffee lovers : avoid it.

This book is a prime example of why self-publishing is an iffy proposition. The recipes in it are excellent; that's not the problem. The writing is wretched, the editing is nonexistent; while I'm sure the author is an excellent tutor one on one (whatever criticisms I have of the book as written, she knows what she's talking about), but she cannot write to save her life. I found reading this book as an adjunct to my training (I was a Starbucks barista at the time) to be terribly useful, but I haven't seen my copy since 1999 and I haven't really missed it.

The only really invaluable recipe here is the Snickerdoodle latte, which is a vanilla latte with whipped cream and cinnamon on it. Apart from that there are far better sources for information. For the record, the three stars I gave this book are almost solely because of the recipes (it gets some props for at least attempting an organization that fits a barista better than a bartender, though); if it wasn't for that it would barely be deserving of one star.

This book is a must to have. I call it my Bible at the coffee shop. There are so many excellent recipes for coffee drinks, my customers want to try a new one every day. A MUST TO HAVE

This is one of the worst guides that I have in my collection of specialty coffee books. I rarely pull this book off of the shelf because it is just so poorly laid out. Some of the beverage recipes are good but for the most part I thought that this book was a waste of my time and money. Most syrup manufacturers will give you free recipes that are much better than the ones presented in this text. There are so many other well-written texts on the subject that if I knew then what I know now I would have skipped purchasing this book and saved my money for one of the better guides.

We have used this guide as a base reference for making drink recipes for the past 4 very successful years. Our best selling drinks are from recipes in this book. I would recommend the book to any new coffee shop owner, unless you're a Starbuck's (aka Mcdonalds espresso bar)

I'm not sure why the first reviewer was so disgruntled with this book. I am a long time coffee lover and brewer. I have served many kinds of coffee/espresso drinks to many people and recieved rave reviews. This book is highly entertaining. The Author teaches you about the "coffee culture" of Seattle and fills page after page with tidbits of trivia that coffee fans will find thoroughly entertaining. I am an avid reader, but also very selective and had no trouble reading this book straight through. For those of you who've stood at the coffee bar and asked,"What's the difference between a cappuccino and a macchiato?" this book will clear the air. He diagrams and plainly explains the exact makeup of each titled coffee drink. He even covers techniques for "decorating" the coffee before you serve it. There is a chapter of 123 pages of nothing but espresso drink recipes (incorporating liquers and flavored syrups) and Italian sodas. Each are listed alphabetically by their name (and some very creative ones, I might add). Also, each page contains between 7 and 8 recipes. If you love to try new things, this will give you tons of ideas. The next part of the book is filled with more creative ideas, brewing tips, trivia of coffee and how it's taken throughout the world and information on brewing with a variety of different private and commercial machines. Altogether, this is an excellent book. I believe it deserves more than 5 stars, but that's all they gave me.

There is a great deal of material here, but it is organized haphazardly and distributed in bits and pieces. Ms. Picard's knowledge of Johnson (and Boswell) is minimal. She does not appear to respect either and repeats anecdotes and commonplaces of the sort that were common in the Victorian period. The book's facts and details are valuable, but it is more a reference work to be consulted than an organized narrative (or set of narratives) to be enjoyed. Richard Schwartz's DAILY LIFE IN JOHNSON'S LONDON anticipates much of the material here, though Picard covers areas of experience not treated by Schwartz. Schwartz's illustrations are far superior. Copies of Rocque's map (cited by each) may be purchased from the Guildhall Museum in London. It provides a detailed sense of the city's streets and surrounding areas. The Museum of the City of London, a few short blocks away in the Barbican, has booklets that deal with pertinent aspects of 18thc social history, e.g., descriptions of wigs, clothing, etc. with illustrations of existing examples. There you can actually see a sedan chair, irons in which executed felons' bodies were hung, eyebrows made of mouse hair, the door of Newgate Prison, and so on.

There is some useful information in this book -- for example, I didn't know that prostitutes in the 18th century actually lined up to attract customers -- but the main failing is the writer's style and tone. Yes, it is good that it is not a scholarly tome and written snootily, but Picard seems to overcompensate. She tries to present herself as "right there," and it is especially annoying when she interpolates herself into direct quotations with her square-bracketed commentaries [my italics, that sort of thing]. There is an apparent lack of scholarly rigor, too: the reader gets tired of seeing "apparently" and "supposedly" and "I can imagine" and all that sort of thing. Does she know or not? If she does, tell us unambiguously. If not, then stop speculating.

This book is for those who want something more than the obvious. Liza Picard's strength is that she does not attempt to be an historian. She states her limitations and then proceeds to examine the things that are of interest to her in the period.
I enjoyed the fact that the author is present in the text. It adds to the book and reminds the reader that this is one person's description of the life and times of London mid-1700s.

The chapter and section headings are clear and precise allowing the reader to dip into areas of particular interest. Picard brings the period to life with her own style which is rarely boring and never pedantic.

The publisher took a generic book on small businesses, threw in the odd coffee & tea reference, slapped on a cover with a coffee cup and viola! a new marketing niche... No specific tea information is included at all. Even the standard business info is done better in other books- save your money and buy one of those.

This book was good in the general starting a business vein. However, it really does not deal in real depth with the actual coffee/tea business. A bit of a disappointment.

I was sent this book through a library loan. I wish I would have received this book earlier in my adventure. It was a great resource for beginning information regarding a coffee shop. I will go out a get a copy for myself for reference. I highly recommend this book for any person thinking of beginning a coffee business.

This book talks little about archaeology and when it does, the interpretation is poor at best. The author is very repetitive with the few sources he has. Despite the lack of a credible discussion of social space, the book is well written and easily read.

The book provides a good theoretical discussion of spatiality within the context of world systems theory. However, insufficient attention was paid to the dynamics of what was purported by Delle to be the major area of study - the Yallahs Coffee Plantations of Jamaica.

James Delle's book successfully explores the historical relationship between the Jamaican power structure and the physical characteristics of several coffee plantations. The book also goes beyond Jamaica, and demonstrates how the global economy is physically represented in the slave populated plantations. Delle provides a generous amount of historical background by tracing the rise and fall of the coffee industry in the 1800's. The text also includes sharp economic and social analysis. Overall, the book is packed with information that is both fascinating and comprehensive.

Maybe I didn't read int the information enough prior to purchasing this book, but I found it to be very basic. More like a text book than a recipe book. Lots of history and background information, and slim on the recipes. Most of this information you can easily find on the internet. I was looking for a guide to make what you might buy and Starbucks, and though a couple might be here I think it is a far cry from how they actually do it. This book was published in 1993 maybe things have evolved since then.

This is a relativly simple book for those who want to impress their friends with a tasty coffee. However if you are a true espresso fan you may be dissapointed, I find the book has more of a candy appeal than true coffee expressions.

As I am French, I enjoy a good cup of cafe au lait. But if you are looking to broaden your horizons, this is the book to own! A coffee lover's heaven, there are lots of great recipes that will be sure to please. Very handy for parties, afternoon gathering or just for yourself. Absolutely wonderful!

After reading books on this subject by Thorn and Kummer it was a real disappointment to me to find that this so-called "ultimate guide" fell far short. If your interest lies more in the way coffee is served and consumed here and in other countries this may hold your interest. (The author's dissertation on U.S.practices manages somehow, even there, to omit any references to the influence of the key people at Peets, Starbucks, and Allegro, for example.) It is far too shallow for my taste in the areas of coffee selection by type and location (pros and cons) and blending techniques.

After having read this book, I can now say that Diana Rosen is one of my favorite authors! Her COMPANION is an incredible guide to coffee around the world, as well as to enjoying it in your own home. As a coffee lover for many years -- I don't simply drink coffee, I *savor* it -- I was thrilled to see the research Ms. Rosen obviously put into this work. This study of "the magic bean" is one I'll keep. . .I consider it to be the definitive work, and it has a permanent place on (where else?) my coffee table.

This book is first and foremost an attempt to establish an alternative version about the author's tenure as an official of the Dutch East Indian Civil Service. In short, he was removed from office for disagreeing with his supervisors' policies, and chose to vent through this book. The disgusting narrative continually portrays the author as something near a Christ-like personality battling a completely inept and corrupt civil service (the latter is almost a redundant description). The author does nothing to contain his raging ego, thus producing a nauseating description of self. The resulting cast of characters are as deep as cardboard cutouts. The cost of this immodest picture is a shallow representation of the plight of the colonized. The reader is forced to sift through page after page of self-serving drivel to extract meager details of the corruption in the Dutch East Indies.

The book has not aged well. Contemporary cynicism--resulting from, in part, Watergate, Vietnam, a stream of revelations of various colonial regimes and a plethora of political scandals--makes the cursory information about the Dutch East Indian Civil Service under whelming. One has to repeatedly remind themselves that the original readers were idealistic about their government's intentions.

One can glean interesting social and cultural glimpses of the period from the bloated pages. This indirect benefit is one of the few reasons to read the book.

If the author had spent more time providing information about the colonies instead of rambling on and on with his self-aggrandizement, this book could have been an invaluable piece of history. As it stands, it is a testimony to the hubris of a flawed man.

By this 19th century novel an attempt was made to arise the awareness of the general public in the Netherlands to the oppression of the Indonesian people by the Dutch colonial system. The book is a cry for justice. The story is set in Amsterdam and Java and has a surprising structure, with changing perspective, and an almost independent romantic story on the love between Saidjah and Adinda. It is romantic, melodramatic even, jet thought-provoking and despite its heavy subject funny and very readable. Yes, certainly rereadable. It gets more beautiful everytime I reread it. I've both read the Dutch original book and this translation, and I think a perfect job has been done.

My first and biggest complaint was that I had no feeling at all as I read this that Agatha Christie had had any part in this. The characterizations, the dialogue, and the movement just didn't feel like her.

My second complaint was that hardly anything had been done to make this a novel. It felt like a play that had just had the stage directions and blocking taken out of it. More should have been done to have given this novel some novelization.

Third, this was the only Hercule Poirot novel with Captain Hastings in it where Hastings does not narrate the story, so why did the author even bother with Hastings? Hastings also blatantly eavedrops in the story, and in every other book he's ever been in he's always chastising Poirot for doing the same thing, and is embarrassed that Poirot would do such a thing. A most blatant derailing from standard Christie.

My biggest problem was that the story dragged on, seemingly endlessly for such a short book. I had this one pegged early, an unusual circumstance for me in reading a Christie story. Over all, I think Poirot should have been left dead, and this book never written since it did nothing to infuse me with a sense of wonder at his incredible rendering of a murder using his little grey cells.

Well, let's be brief. This novel was first written as a play, and even though Mr. Osborne, I'm sure, did his best to make it look like a novel, it still has the basic characteristics of a play. There is very little description and too much dialogue. The sets are limited to a single room, just as in a play. My impression is that Mr. Osborne tried to remain as close as possible to Agatha Christie's original play. Yet he could have been a little more imaginative, and I'm sure it only could have made the book more interesting to read.

As for the plot (without giving it away), let's just say that the mystery was easy to solve. To say the least, part of the solution had already been used by Agatha Christie in "The Mysterious Affair at Styles." Therefore, the publication of "Black Coffee" as a novel cannot be really justified, since this second-rate Christie material, for the most part, had already been used before in other Christie novels. Making a novel out of "Black Coffee" is useless. It's just the same as if someone wanted to write a novel version of Christie's play "Alibi," when the latter is already based on her novel "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd".

I found this book very intriguing! I was first hooked on Agatha Christie books last year when we read And Then There Were None in my language arts class. The latter still remains my favorite Agatha Christie mystery, but I found Black Coffee up there with the best (along with Murder on the Orient Express and Cat Among the Pigeons). The only fault that I have discovered in mostly all of Christie's novels is the fact that most of them have a rather slow beginning (except, for the most part, And Then There Were None, although this too was a bit slow). Yet Black Coffee held my interest from the very start. I did not find the murderer very obvious, since I kept changing my opinion of who the murderer was. Although Charles Osborne did a very wonderful job of writing the novel and keeping as close to the script of the play, it was not a true work of Agatha Christie. Therefore, I could not award this book a five. (Yet I thoroughly enjoyed the overuse of dialogue.) I still remain a major fan of Hercule Poirot mysteries, and Black Coffee was one of the best. Hercule is brilliant, and it certainly showed in this particular novel.

p.s. - After blabbing on and on about the wonderful Agatha Christie mysteries to my twelve-year-old cousin (whom I'm very close in relationship to), I've managed to get her hooked on the Agatha Christie novels. Hurray for me! Now I have a close friend to converse over with these wonderful books! We also exchange our Agatha Christie books with each other now, and recommend ones that we've borrowed from the library or another friend. I strongly recommended Black Coffee to her. She, too, has not read any Miss Marple mysteries yet, and is thoroughly interested in Hercule Poirot's cases. Ms. Christie has quite a brilliant mind, and we praise her for that.