Reviews for Mate: Su Historia y Cultura

The average rating for Mate: Su Historia y Cultura based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-02-22 00:00:00 Lowell Holway Hmmm... I read this for a class looking at social change through the lens of the rise of coffee & sugar. This book documents an important development, the rise of coffeehouses and the attendant shifts in the modes and meanings of coffee consumption, and specifically the public performances of such. Cowan's argument is problematic in that he grants basically all the agency in the rise of coffee culture to this supposedly fully formed class, the virtuosi, an argument I found sort of vaguely unfulfilling. Besides that though, the documentation and research is thorough and fascinating, and he is really careful about how much importance he assigns to coffeehouses in the social, cultural, and political change... they are neither backdrop to nor the most important avatar of the development of a public sphere or new culture of industrial capitalism, he discusses coffeehouses as simply an arena in which these meanings were negotiated. All in all, a nice historical treatment of an interesting topic. Not without its faults but all in all, useful. Though I must admit that it is forbiddingly academic to the casual reader.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-12-04 00:00:00 Astig Melemetdjian Interesting but dense and unnecessarily long Interesting summary of the adoption of coffee in British life and the subsequent rise of coffee houses. But the text was pretty dry and the book was longer than what it needed to be to get across its core ideas.