I was asked recently by a new gang in town, who put out lists of “The Five Best Books on . . . ,” to make such a list for coffee. Here is the link:
https://shepherd.com/best-books/us-china-britain-france-and-nicaragua-coffee
My choices are idiosyncratic, of course. There are many other fine books about coffee out there. These five, plus my own, appeal to me for different reasons. And I wanted to make a list that had a variety of approaches, specific subjects within coffee topics, and styles.
Since I have an excuse now to plug my own book, here it is. Available all over.
And here is the book I published last January. Also highly readable!
My new book, out from Routledge, is The Body in the Anglosphere, 1880-1920: “Well Sexed Womanhood,” “Finer Natives,” and “Very White Men.” It’s available many places, including the usual web bookstores. The subtitle is quotations from the period, of course, and they provide some insight into what the book is about. In the period I cover, Anglo-Saxons, who formed a cultural community around the world, paid rapt and growing attention to the body, theirs and others’, and to its capabilities. I put together new or changing images of the body that millions around the world could see and could emulate. These images were central to the debate about women’s feelings and strength: were they “passionless”? No, according to many accounts.
The picture of the helpless Victorian woman is at best highly misleading. Doctors and many others argued vigorously that women felt a great deal in and out of bed. It followed that the range of capabilities they might have expanded tremendously.
Women and men unveiled their bodies and touted exercise–and often sex as well–in novels, the circus, changing or new sports like basketball and boxing, in photography, and on bicycles. Rapidly developing technology brought the new images and the nude or partially clad body to viewers around the world; besides in photography, this unveiling took place on stage and in the circus, which traveled on new railroads, to take two examples. The Anglo-Saxons also saw many pictures and dealt with presence of the “New Negro” and of colonized people. At a time of global political dominance, the Anglos also felt deeply anxious about their future as a people who ruled over darker-skinned folk from New York through London, Cape Town, Delhi, and Sydney.
I’ve also published a new article on coffee. It has the merit of being short: “Coffee and Health: What the Research Says,” Roast magazine, Jan/Feb. 2022
The easiest way to find it is to click on a link to my blog: thurstrw.wordpress.com
The news about coffee and health is almost entirely good. So, unless you have especially high blood pressure or some other major health issue, or if coffee just keeps you awake no matter when you drink it, imbibe and enjoy. I hope people are using whole beans, grinding them at home, using filters; the best health results come from filtered coffee, not unfiltered like espresso, French press, or Turkish (Mediterranean, Arabic) coffee.
Abbreviated CURRICULUM VITAE
Robert W. Thurston Professor Emeritus of History, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio
Home Address
211 North Ridge Drive, Oxford, Ohio 45056. Telephone: (513) 461-5261 https://robertwthurston.wordpress.com/
Education
Ph.D. in Modern Russian History, University of Michigan, 1980
M.A. in Modern Russian History, University of Michigan, 1975
B.A. in History, Northwestern University, 1971
Languages
Russian, French, German, Ukrainian (reading), Spanish (reading), Polish (minimal reading knowledge)
Employment
2012-present Managing Partner, Oxford Coffee Company, a roastery and coffee retail business
2015 retired as Professor of History, Miami University
2012-15: Professor of History, quasi-retired, Miami University
2004-12: Phillip R. Shriver Professor of History, Miami University
1996-2004: Professor, Miami University
1990-1996: Associate Professor, Miami University
1987-1990: Assistant Professor, Miami University
1983-1987: Assistant Professor, University of Texas at El Paso
1981-83: Visiting Assistant Professor, University of California, San Diego
1980-81: Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Vermont
Major Academic Grants and Awards
2001: Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Program award, in conjunction with an
Individual Advanced Research Opportunity award from the International Research and Exchanges Board for research in Ukraine and Russia
1992-93: Award from the American Council of Learned Societies (in conjunction with the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) for a collaborative German-American project on “Popular Response to World War II in the Soviet Union,” a workshop and book of articles
National Endowment for the Humanities Travel to Collections Grant
1987-88: International Research and Exchanges Board Grant for research in the USSR
1986: Research Grant from the American Philosophical Society
1985: National Endowment for the Humanities Travel to Collections Grant
1981: Visiting Grant, Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars
1978-79: Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, International Research and Exchanges Board grant for doctoral dissertation Research in the USSR
Scholarly Publications
Monographs
The Body in the Anglosphere, 1880-1920: “Well Sexed Womanhood,” “Finer Natives,” and “Very White Men,” Routledge, 2022.
Coffee: From Bean to Barista, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2018.
Lynching: American Mob Murder in Global Perspective, Farnham, England, Ashgate Publications, 2011.
The Witch Hunts: A History of the Witch Persecutions in Europe and North America, London, Pearson Education, 2007. A revised edition of Witch, Wicce, Mother Goose. Polish translation as Polowania na Czarownice, Warsaw: Panstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 2008.
Witch, Wicce, Mother Goose: The Rise and Fall of the Witch Hunts in Europe and North America, London, Longman Publishers, 2001. A selection of the British Book Club.
Greek translation, Athens: Papazissis Press, 2006.
Life and Terror in Stalin’s Russia, 1934-1941, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1996. An alternate selection of the History Book Club. Paper edition 1998.
Liberal City, Conservative State: Moscow and Russia’s Urban Crisis, 1906-1914, New York, Oxford University Press, 1987.
Edited Books
Coffee: A Comprehensive Guide to the Bean, the Beverage, and the Industry, Lanham, MD, Rowman and Littlefield, 2013. Senior editor and contributor of several articles. Chosen by Gourmand Magazine as best American book of 2013 on coffee. Named by Library Journal as one of the best reference works of 2013.
Chinese translation (complex characters), with an added chapter on coffee in China, 2016. Indonesian translation 2019. Hungarian translation, with a new foreword, 2020.
Paper edition 2017.
The People’s War: Popular Response to World War II in the Soviet Union, Urbana, IL, University of Illinois Press, 2000. Co-editor with Bernd Bonwetsch, co-author of the introduction, author of one article, translator of three articles.
Scholarly Articles
“Lynching,” Elgar Encyclopedia of Crime and Criminal Justice, forthcoming.
“Violence toward Heretics and Witches,” in The Cambridge World History of Violence, Cambridge University Press, 2020.
“Salem,” in the Routledge History of Witchcraft, 2019.
“Ukraine and the Lethal Hand of History,” The Wilson Quarterly, February 2016.
“Coffee, Soap, and Empire: Exoticism vs. Purity,” Longberry magazine, 2014, issue 1.
“El combatiente Soviético. Comportamiento y moral” (The Soviet Soldier: Behavior and Morale [at the Battle of Stalingrad]), Desperta Ferro 2014, no. 2.
“Coffee,” 4000-word entry in Alcohol and Drugs in North America: A Historical Encyclopedia, David M. Fahey and Jon S. Miller, editors, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 2013.
“Lynching and Legitimacy: Toward a Global Description of Mob Murder,” in Globalizing Lynching History: Vigilantism and Extralegal Punishment from an International Perspective, ed. Manfred Berg and Simon Wendt, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
“Lynching in den USA in globaler Perspektive,” [Lynching in Global Perspective], Zeitschrift für Weltgeschichte [Journal of World History], 12, Heft 1 (2011).
“The World, The Flesh and the Devil (Robert W. Thurston looks at the politics of demonology and rethinks attitudes to witches and women between 1400 and 1700),” History Today, 56, no. 11 (November 2006).
“Moscow,” in Encyclopedia of Europe, 1789-1914, New York, Scribner’s/Thomson, 2006.
“Proof, problem of,” in Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition, ed. Richard Golden, Santa Barbara, Calif., ABC-CLIO, 2006.
“Problemy byta i identichnosti v imperatorskoi Rossii i SShA (konets XIX-nachalo XX vv.” [Problems of Everyday Life and Identity in Imperial Russia and the U.S., late nineteenth-early twentieth centuries], Visnik kharkivs’kogo natsional’nogo Universitety im. V. N. Karazina [Report of Khar’kov National University named after V. N. Karazin] 37, no. 701, 2005.
“Coffee,” in France and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History, edited by Bill Marshall, Santa Barbara, Calif., ABC-CLIO, 2005.
“The Spawning of Satan,” BBC History Magazine, 3, no. 5 (2002).
“Periodizatsiia i Prosveshchenie: voprosy transformatsii pravovykh norm v Zapadnoi Evrope” [Periodization and Enlightenment: issues of the transformation of legal norms in Western Europe], Problemy periodizatsii istorii ta istoriografichnogo protsesu [problems historical periodization and of the historiographical process], Kharkivs’kii istorio-grafichnii zbirnik [Khar’kov historiographical journal], 5, Khar’kov, Ukraine, 2002.
“Stalinism in Context and Perspective: Sources of Permission to Hate in Europe,“ in James Kaye and Bo Stråth (eds), Enlightenment and Genocide, Contradictions of Modernity (Brussels: PIE-Peter Lang, 2000).
“The Rise and Fall of Judicial Torture in the Witch Hunts and the Soviet Terror,” Human Rights Review, 1, no. 4 (2000).
“Introduction,” together with Bernd Bonwetsch, in The People’s War.
“Cauldrons of Loyalty and Betrayal: Soviet Soldiers’ Behavior 1941 and 1945,” in The People’s War.
“Vezhlivost’ i vlast’ na sovetskikh fabrikhakh i zavodakh. Dostoinstvo rabochikh 1935-1941 gg.” [Politeness and authority in Soviet factories and plants: workers’ dignity 1935-1941], in Rossiiskaia povsednevnost’ 1921-1941 gg. Novye podkhody [Russian everyday life 1921-1941: New approaches] St. Petersburg, Russia: 1995.
“The Stakhanovite Movement: The Background to the Great Terror in the Factories, 1935-1938,” in Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives, ed. J. Arch Getty and Roberta Manning, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1993.
“Stalinism and Professionalism: A Reply to Jane Burbank,” Politics and Society, 20, no. 3 (1992), 367-375.
“New Thoughts on the Old Regime and the Revolution of 1917 in Russia: A Review of Recent Western Literature,” in Modernization and Revolution: Dilemmas of Progress in Late Imperial Russia. Essays in Honor of Arthur P. Mendel, Boulder, Colorado, East European Monographs (distributed by Columbia University Press), 1992.
“Reassessing the History of Soviet Workers: Opportunities to Criticize and Participate in Decision-Making, 1935-1941,” in New Directions in Soviet History, ed. Stephen White, London, Cambridge University Press, 1991.
“The Soviet Family during the ‘Great Terror,’ 1935-1941,” Soviet Studies, 43, no. 3 (1991), 553-574.
“Social Dimensions of Stalinist Rule: Humor and Terror in the USSR, 1935-1941,” The Journal of Social History, 24, no. 3 (1991), 541-562.
“Fear and Belief in the USSR’s ‘Great Terror’: Response to Arrest, 1935-1939,” Slavic Review, 45, no. 2 (1986), 213-234.
“On Desk-bound Parochialism, Commonsense Perspectives, and Lousy Evidence: A Reply to Robert Conquest,” Slavic Review, 45, no. 2 (1986), 238-244.
“Entente with Russia, 1894,” in Historical Dictionary of the French Third Republic, ed. Patrick Hutton, Greenwood Press, 1986.
“Developing Education in Late Imperial Russia: The Concerns of State, ‘Society,’ and People in Moscow, 1906-1914,” Russian History, 11, no. 1 (Spring 1984), 53-82.
“Police and People in Moscow, 1906-1914,” Russian Review, 39, no. 3 (1980), 320-338.
Trade magazine articles
“Coffee and Health: What Does the Research Say?” Roast magazine, January/February 2022.
“Can the Coffee Crisis Be Fixed? An Analysis of Proposals on the Table,” Roast magazine, May/June 2020.
“Can the Coffee Crisis Be Fixed? The Price of Coffee, History and the Situation Today,” Roast magazine, March/April 2020.
“Branded: Coffee Unjustly Convicted by Court,” STIR: Business Insight on Coffee and Tea, June 5, 2018.
“The Fight Against Coffee Pests: Recent Scientific Research,” Roast Magazine, January/February 2018.
“GMO and Coffee: The Cultural War is On,” STIR: Business Insight on Coffee and Tea, August 1, 2015.
“Reflections on Coffee’s Social Life: New and Old Ideas on Coffee Bars, Social Interaction and the ‘Third Place’,” Roast Magazine, May/June 2012.
“Municipal House Café, Prague, Czech Republic,” one-page profile of the café with photographs, Specialty Coffee Retailer, August, 2011. Part of the series “Bistro Voyages.”
“Caffe Moro, Heidelberg, Germany,” one-page profile, Specialty Coffee Retailer, May, 2011. Another “Bistro Voyage.”
“Santo Grao Cafes, Sao Paulo, Brazil,” one-page profile, Specialty Coffee Retailer, April, 2011. Another “Bistro Voyage.”
“Caffe Florian, Venice, Italy,” one-page profile, Specialty Coffee Retailer, March, 2011. Another “Bistro Voyage.”
“Caffe Degli Specchi, Trieste, Italy,” one-page profile, Specialty Coffee Retailer, January, 2011. Another “Bistro Voyage.”
“A Gallery of Coffee Advertising” with “A Brief, Brief History of Coffee Advertising in America,” Roast Magazine, May/June 2009.
“What Can a Professor of History Give Back to the World of Coffee?” The Specialty Coffee Chronicle, September/October 2008.
Op Eds and other Popular Publications (titles selected by editors)
“Forget Gun Control: It’s Time for Ammunition Control, Cincinnati Enquirer, June 4, 2022.
“Threatening people to stop thinking is dangerous,” Cincinnati Enquirer, July 26, 2021
“Expansion and Motivation: Frontiers and Borders in the Past and Present of the United States and Russia,” History News Network, September 15, 2019
[on gun control] “Hiding Behind the Second Amendment Is a Nasty Scam and Misunderstanding of American History,” History News Network, February 25, 2017
“How Hollywood Keeps Getting Afghanistan Wrong” History News Network, June 25, 2017
“Ordinary People Learn History from Teachers, Movies, and This [romance novels]” History News Network, June 13, 2016
“Beginning 2015 with (the) Miracles,” [on rock ‘n roll and the Civil Rights Movement], Cincinnati Enquirer, January 12, 2015
“Ukraine’s Toxic History of Fascism and Ethnic Cleansing,” History News Network, March 5, 2014
“Job Creators? Where Do Wealthy Spend their Money?” Cincinnati Enquirer, July 18, 2011.
“Sacred cows, skewed priorities guide budgeting at universities,” Cincinnati Enquirer, November 14, 2010.
“Obama’s Messages Heard Across Races,” Cincinnati Enquirer, June 14, 2009.
“The History of Torture Shows It Does Not Work,” History News Network (blog), June 1, 2009.
“History Teaches Us How Torture Was Misused,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 18, 2009.
“In the War against Torture, of What Use Is a Dispassionate Definition of Terms?” Chronicle of Higher Education,” July 16, 1999.
“A Library Exhibit Offers Faulty ‘Revelations’ about Soviet History,” Chronicle of Higher Education, November 25, 1992.
“TV Makes Politics Accountable,” The Atlanta Journal/The Atlanta Constitution, October 28, 1992; other versions in The Cincinnati Enquirer, October 23, 1992 and The Baltimore Evening Sun, October 16, 1992.
“Inefficiencies: East and West,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, September 19, 1988.
“Soviets Use Astute Means to Control Big Moslem Sector,” Atlanta Journal and Constitution, January 20, 1980.
“Soviet Humor Helps Relieve a Harsh Life,” Atlanta Journal and Constitution, December 9, 1979.
“Get the Message: USSR Neon is Happy Medium,” Article and photographs, Smithsonian, October 1979.
Podcasts and radio shows
On coffee:
BBC Food Programme
Radio broadcast September 4, 2016 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07sxqt8
Podcast September 5, 2016 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qnx3/episodes/downloads
WVXU/WMUB Cincinnati/Oxford, Ohio
http://wvxu.org/post/growth-and-challenges-facing-coffee-industry#stream/0
January 25, 2017
http://wvxu.org/post/100-million-americans-have-least-one-thing-common-drinking-coffee-each-day#stream/0 November 18, 2015
http://wvxu.org/post/coffee-comprehensive-guide#stream/0 March 15, 2014. Originally broadcast December 18, 2013
On witches and the film Haxan: http://projection-booth.blogspot.com/2015/10/episode-242-h.html October 26, 2015
On lynching: http://newbooksinhistory.com/2011/08/05/robert-thurston-lynching-american-mob-murder-in-global-perspective-ashgate-2011/ August 5, 2011
Reviews
in American Historical Review, Journal of Modern History, Canadian-American Slavic Studies, Slavonica, Slavic Review, Social Analysis, Soviet Union, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, Russian Review, Russian History, H-Russia, and Science and Society.
Invited Talks on Coffee in the U.S., Beijing, London, Paris, Nicaragua
Work in Progress
Book manuscript: 1794: War, Rebellion, and The Making of Federal Power.
I have recently published two articles, actually a series, on the “coffee crisis.” They are in Roast magazine for March-April and for May-June. The topics are, in the first article, the price of coffee on the NY exchange, called Coffee C, the history of fluctuations in price, and what is happening with small farmers. The second article is a discussion of proposals to “fix” the price crisis and get more money into the hands of small farmers, a vexed issue. All of that was written before the pandemic really struck, and so it all seems to apply almost to a different world.Coffee Crisis I 2020
A reindeer in Maastricht, Netherlands
My Personal website 