Caffeine

Caffeine: How Caffeine Created the Modern World

Genres: Nonfiction
Length: 6 hours
Published on 2020
Format: Audiobook Source: Audible, Owned
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Michael Pollan, known for his best-selling nonfiction audio, including The Omnivores Dilemma and How to Change Your Mind, conceived and wrote Caffeine: How Caffeine Created the Modern World as an Audible Original. In this controversial and exciting listen, Pollan explores caffeine's power as the most-used drug in the world - and the only one we give to children (in soda pop) as a treat.

Pollan takes us on a journey through the history of the drug, which was first discovered in a small part of East Africa and within a century became an addiction affecting most of the human species. Caffeine, it turns out, has changed the course of human history - won and lost wars, changed politics, dominated economies. What's more, the author shows that the Industrial Revolution would have been impossible without it. The science of how the drug has evolved to addict us is no less fascinating. And caffeine has done all these things while hiding in plain sight! Percolated with Michael Pollan's unique ability to entertain, inform, and perform, Caffeine is essential listening in a world where an estimated two billion cups of coffee are consumed every day.

This is a fairly short Audible original audiobook written and read by Michael Pollan.  Of course I had to listen to it!

It starts off with the author lamenting that to truly understand the affects of caffeine he had to go off of it for a while.  He procrastinated for a long time and then quit his fairly mild caffeine habit cold turkey.  This led him to believe that the whole idea of writing about caffeine was stupid and also that he would never write again.  He spiraled a bit until his brain got used to this new reality.  

I’ve never really been a person who absolutely needed caffeine to function.  I’ve always felt like it didn’t have a lot of affect on me.  Maybe I’m wrong about that.  It turns out even small doses can make major impacts on sleep quality.  I’m a good sleeper but who knows if I’m getting the best sleep I could be getting?

This audiobook covers a lot of ground in a short time.  There is the history of coffee and tea, the science of caffeine’s affects on the brain, and the affects of caffeine on Western civilization.  Did switching from beer to coffee drive the move out of the Middle Ages in Britain once everyone traded being mildly drunk all the time for being buzzed on caffeine?  

If you’re a Michael Pollan fan, this is a good addition to your library.