Coffee

Dinah Lenney is a member of the core faculty of the Bennington Writing Seminars, and the author or editor of four books, including The Object Parade (2014). Her essays and reviews have been published in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and The Washington Post among other publications.

• Prologue1. The Impossibility of the Task 2. My Mother Is Coming, My Mother Is ComingThe Questionnaire3. Coffee-MilkFrom the Coffee Diaries #14. My Emerging PalateA Coffee Story (Third-Hand)5. What We Talk About When We Talk About Coffee (Teresa Was Right)6. Coffee in Brooklyn7. Twenty-Two Hands...A Coffee Story (First-Hand)Rules Shmules (Just a Few, in No Particular Order)These Things About Coffee Are TrueFrom the Coffee Diaries #28. Serious Business9. Shouldn’t Coffee Taste Like Coffee?(If You Say So)10. Coffee in Paris11. Extending the Metaphor12. All the Things You Are13. The Power of Suggestion14. One More Prompt15. Am I BlueFrom the Coffee Diaries #316. A Word About TeaA Riddle (Excellent Advertising)From the Coffee Diaries #4 17. ReunionCoffee and My FatherFrom the Coffee Diaries #5From the Coffee Diaries #618. Coffee and CatastropheFrom the Coffee Diaries #719. Coffee in Echo Park20. Coffee and the JewsCoffee and Dad21. The Widow22. Altered States From the Coffee Diaries #8From the Coffee Diaries #9From the Coffee Diaries #10EpilogueAcknowledgementsMy Coffee Book Fort (Further Reading)Index

Lenney’s book, part of the publisher’s Object Lessons series about the ‘hidden lives of ordinary things,’ is a fluid, involving memoir of her experience of coffee, a pleasurable tour of her memories, reflections, and research on the topic … The result is a winning combination of enthusiasm and naïveté, which allows the reader to explore recent research about coffee and its physiological effects, the more esoteric corners of coffee connoisseurship and fandom, and the cultural attitudes to coffee shown by her friends and family without ever feeling lectured ... This deft memoir-cum-meditation is as savory and stimulating as its subject.