Caffeine cover art

Caffeine

How Caffeine Created the Modern World

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Caffeine

By: Michael Pollan
Narrated by: Michael Pollan
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About this listen

Michael Pollan, known for his best-selling nonfiction audio, including The Omnivores Dilemma and How to Change Your Mind, conceived and wrote Caffeine: How Caffeine Created the Modern World as an Audible Original. In this controversial and exciting listen, Pollan explores caffeine’s power as the most-used drug in the world - and the only one we give to children (in soda pop) as a treat.

Pollan takes us on a journey through the history of the drug, which was first discovered in a small part of East Africa and within a century became an addiction affecting most of the human species. Caffeine, it turns out, has changed the course of human history - won and lost wars, changed politics, dominated economies. What’s more, the author shows that the Industrial Revolution would have been impossible without it. The science of how the drug has evolved to addict us is no less fascinating. And caffeine has done all these things while hiding in plain sight! Percolated with Michael Pollan’s unique ability to entertain, inform, and perform, Caffeine is essential listening in a world where an estimated two billion cups of coffee are consumed every day.

©2019 Michael Pollan (P)2020 Audible Originals, LLC. Food & Wine Social Sciences Wine & Beverages Modern Fiction

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All stars
Most relevant
it's a short book but besides that it's a book that gives you a lesson about the world's favourite substance.

concise

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Just happened to stumble upon the book without a lot of expectation but it turned out to be an easy-read or easy-listen in this case. I learned a lot about how caffeine and how it took over Europe and the US. I recommend this to all the coffee lovers and tea lovers too!

Easy and interesting read

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Short and sweet reading. I simultaneously enjoyed and disliked the anthropomorphisation of coffee. Yes this is a plant that is very significant in many peoples lives, but from an evolutionary standpoint there were some fallacies.

Sufficiently engaging

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Enjoyed listening. it was informative and well read. Will probably listen again with my coffee :)

Good listen and interesting

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EN: Lots of interesting things about coffee and how this drug influenced humankind during the last centuries. I found the history part fascinating and the narration by the author really enjoyable. We should all follow his example and experiment a period of time without this drug to find out how our bodies reacts to it later without any tolerance.

A short audiobook about a drug called coffee...

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