The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse

"Easily the most thorough account of the social history of the British coffeehouse ever written." —Adrian Johns, University of Chicago

What induced the British to adopt foreign coffee-drinking customs in the seventeenth century? Why did an entirely new social institution, the coffeehouse, emerge as the primary place for consumption of this new drink? In this lively book, Brian Cowan locates the answers to these questions in the particularly British combination of curiosity, commerce, and civ...