I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own. 

Author Steven P. Unger shares the long and storied history of coffee, as well as the travel experiences of consuming coffee on multiple continents in the book “Black as Hell, Strong as Death, and Sweet as Love: A Coffee Travel Guide.”

The Synopsis

BLACK AS HELL, STRONG AS DEATH, SWEET AS LOVE: A Coffee Travel Guide, is the first and only book to trace coffee consumption from its origins in prehistory to becoming the world’s second-most-valuable commodity after oil—and to pair this history with replicable, affordable Coffee Experiences that provide a unique approach and added value to the readers’ destinations, no matter how many times they’ve been there before. This book is a multi-genre travel book with unique historical insights that immerse the reader in the culture of a country or city through the lens of the destination’s deep relationship with coffee. No other travel book has ever provided the kind of total immersion into a country or city—through histories, travel directions, one-of-a-kind photos, and recipes—that BLACK AS HELL, STRONG AS DEATH, SWEET AS LOVE: A Coffee Travel Guide, delivers in every chapter.

The timing is right for BLACK AS HELL, STRONG AS DEATH, SWEET AS LOVE: A Coffee Travel Guide, a history of coffee and a travel guide to Coffee Experiences on almost every continent. Plus, there are recipes.

Among the Coffee Experience destinations are places that almost no one goes to, like Ethiopia’s South Omo, and places masses of tourists go to, like Paris. Other Coffee Experiences are closer to home for Americans, as simple as sharing a colada at a ventanilla in Miami’s Little Havana; or taking the Canal streetcar to the end of the line, where Morning Call in New Orleans’ Spanish moss-shrouded City Park offers chicory coffee, beignets, crawfish bread, gumbo, alligator sausage, and jambalaya just a short walk away from the last remaining section of Bayou Metairie.

These Coffee Experiences result from three years of related travel, five years of research, and decades of travel and travel writing. These are the Best of the Best, the Coffee Experiences that surpassed all our expectations.

Linking the Coffee Experiences to history provides a unique approach to a city or country’s particular relationship to coffee. Coffee Experiences may be in the middle of, or adjacent to heavily touristed areas, but for the most part, they are places barely mentioned in guidebooks.

The Coffee Trail is full of curious twists and turns, spanning millennia and the rise and fall of great civilizations. Surviving bans from religions and regimes, coffee consumption has changed its style constantly to adapt to new customs, new physiologies, and new technologies with the driving mandates of better taste and more effective delivery systems for the physically and psychologically stimulating effects of caffeine.

All along the Coffee Trail, from Africa to Europe and the New World, each culture and country has added its own unique stamp to the passport of Coffee Experiences. This book is a journey through those countries and cultures with stopovers that are sometimes a reenactment, and sometimes a re-imagination of a unique time and place in the human history of coffee consumption.

The Review

This was such a fascinating read. Like much of the population, I am a coffee drinker, but I didn’t always know that there could be a powerful history behind the cultivation of coffee beans throughout the world. The sheer volume of detail and insight the author provides is fascinating. The author explores different cultures and continents not only in terms of how the coffee bean has grown and evolved there but also how the consumption of coffee has evolved and grown over time. 

The balance of the beauty that photographer Ruth St. Steven captured with the imagery of the author’s writing style and the sense of adventure that this book brought made it such an engaging read. The book not only featured an eclectic collection of history and stories related to coffee, but each location the author explored came with recommendations for orders, recipes, and where to get coffee while there. 

The Verdict

Equal parts reference book, guide, history, and adventure book, author Steven P. Unger’s “Black as Hell, Strong as Death, and Sweet as Love” is a must-read. The honesty, depth of knowledge, and thorough exploration of this subject, the locations where these products can be found, and the passion for coffee will instantly draw readers in. If you haven’t yet, be sure to grab your copy today.

Rating: 10/10

About the Author

Steven P. Unger has traveled extensively in North, South, and Central America; Western Europe; the Middle East; Africa; Istanbul; and Romania. He has been published in numerous travel and bicycling magazines. His book, In the Footsteps of Dracula: A Personal Journey and Travel Guide, 3rd Ed., traces the voyages and eventual flight of Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula from Transylvania to London and back in text and photographs, and pairs this journey with the life and times of Dracula’s real-life counterpart, Prince Vlad Dracula, or Vlad the Impaler.

Mr. Unger was an exchange student at a historically black college, Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, and later a member of the Bear Tribe, a California commune that tried sharecropping, goat herding, and living in teepees—and failed spectacularly at everything. These adventures and many more are described in his novel Dancing in the Streets.

He also wrote the accompanying text and Preface for Before the Paparazzi: Fifty Years of Extraordinary Photographs, which includes over 250 pictures taken by Arty Pomerantz, staff photographer and assignment editor for the New York Post from the 1960s through the early 1990s.

Appearances by the author for Before the Paparazzi, 50 Years of Extraordinary Photographs included a video of his co-author’s life and work. In October 2014 at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism, the author’s presentation was followed by a roundtable on contemporary photojournalism with members of the New York Press Club and the New York Press Photographers’ Association. This presentation was given at the New York City Fire Museum and the Bronx Documentary Center, and was one of four lectures for the 2015-2016 California State University, Sacramento, Friends of the Library Author Lecture Series.

He lives with Ruthie St. Steven and their terrier mix Bailey in Elk Grove, California.