BLACK AS HELL, STRONG AS DEATH,
AND SWEET AS LOVE

A COFFEE TRAVEL GUIDE

Text by Steven P. Unger
Photos by Ruth St. Steven

This book is also available as a Kindle eBook for $9.99. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D9QMKYP1

Paperback available through this site or directly from Amazon!

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 authors love both coffee and cafés. I don’t care for coffee (besides Israeli instant coffee), but I am fascinated by cafés 'where one can think.' We all share the book's vision of the café—as a world of dreams. This book helps those dreams come true."                                                ~ Ariel Rubinstein, Professor, School of Economics, Tel Aviv University and Department of Economics, New York University

"A passionate and precise work that tells the story of coffee from A to Z."                                                                           ~ Sébastien Gionta, Director of Marketing and Communications, Les Deux Magots, Paris

"Steven and Ruthie do an incredible job of telling both the history of coffee and the cultural importance of this mystical drink. As a self-proclaimed coffee snob, this book was enlightening and a joy. Pull up a chair, sip an espresso, and delight in a great read!"                                    ~ Xavier Curtis, Founder of Go Further Tours: Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Uganda