Quotes from Mark Pendergrast

Only one thing is certian about coffee.... Wherever it is grown, sold, brewed, and consumed, there will be lively controversy, strong opinions, and good conversation.

Whenever there is chaos and disorganization," Saks observed, "that is the time to make money.

When caffeine gets to the receptors first, however, it doesn't let adenosine do its job. Caffeine doesn't actively keep us awake—it just blocks the natural mental brake.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the United States would consume nearly half of the world's coffee.

I am somewhat skeptical about these findings.

A few Sharps carbines were designed to hold a coffee mill in the butt stock of the gun, so that the soldier could always carry his grinder with him.

In 1938, after eight years of experimentation, Nestlé launched Nescafé

Considerable self-confidence was an understatement. People knew when he entered a room… He tipped the boat. You had to scramble to keep your equilibrium.

Let the not-quite-boiling water remain in contact with the ground coffee at the proper ratio—two tablespoons of coffee per six ounces of water—for four or five minutes. Pour the filtered coffee into your cup.

Americans sense that something is wrong with the places where we live and work and go about our daily business," wrote social critic James Howard Kunstler in 1996. "We drive up and down the gruesome, tragic suburban boulevards of commerce, and we're overwhelmed at the fantastic, awesome, stupefying ugliness of absolutely everything in sight… as though the whole thing had been designed by some diabolical force bent on making human beings miserable.

I dreamed big," she recalled. "Why not?

Yet historical roots influence contemporary behavior and decisions for a city just as childhood experiences remain crucial to adult attitudes for an individual.