Uncommon Grounds

Author: Mark Pendergrast · Edition in hand: Revised edition, 2010, Basic Books, ISBN 978-0-465-01836-9 (ref. HH-LIB-2026-0016)

Uncommon Grounds traces coffee from Ethiopian legend to modern commodity markets, weaving botany, labor, advertising, and war economies into a single narrative. The revised edition refreshes statistics and recent industry turns. Use it for big-picture context when a regional brand story bumps into global supply chains, regulation, or consumer fashion.

Relevance to H&H

Largely resolved (2026-07-22). IA’s search-inside API (not the borrow-only reader) can be queried directly for full-text hits without checking the book out. A search of the 1999 first edition (archive.org/details/uncommongroundsh00pend) for “Hoffmann” returns only three unrelated citation hits (a different Paul/Peter Hoffmann, author of That Fine Italian Hand, and a 1980 NYT byline); a search for “San Antonio” returns only two generic mentions (a 1930s Jewel Tea Co. delivery route, a 1990s Starbucks store opening) — no mention of Hoffmann-Hayman or H&H. The collection’s actual holding is the 2010 revised edition (HH-LIB-2026-0016), which was not independently searched, so this isn’t a perfect substitute for TODO-63’s in-hand read — but combined with the book’s national (not San Antonio-specific) scope, a mention in the revised edition that wasn’t already in the 1999 edition is unlikely. Deprioritized; not worth a physical read-through on current evidence.

[Curator note: how this resource relates to H&H research — does it mention H&H/Hoffmann/Hayman/San Antonio? What period does it cover? Which KB pages cite it?]

See also

• Public-facing resource page — same content, projected to the Jekyll site