In 18th-century America, the pleasant practice of taking tea at home was an established social custom with a recognized code of manners and distinctive furnishings. Pride was taken in a correct and fashionable tea table whose equipage included much more than teapot, cups, and saucers. (Rodris Roth) Americans are not the greatest tea drinkers in… Continue reading

If you’re looking for old books about tea there are plenty of them just a click away, thanks to the ongoing efforts to digitize what seems like every piece of printed material ever published. I’ve written about many of these over the years and keep waiting for the supply to run dry, but it hasn’t yet.… Continue reading

Each time I embark upon the writing of this column, I find myself getting a little nervous. After all, the supply of new tea books has to run out some time. Doesn’t it? Well, maybe it will at some point, but we apparently haven’t gotten to that point just yet. So let’s get on with… Continue reading

Tea books abound, as fellow blogger William I. Lengeman III has shown on this blog in his monthly postings about the latest of them. And I have learned to “just say no” when it comes to offers to review new ones. I would be spending time on nothing else. However, a little book called Tea… Continue reading

Writing a bunch of monthly columns about tea books, as well as some miscellaneous articles about tea books, I assumed that I was aware of absolutely every tea book that’s been loosed on the world in recent years. But that’s not quite true, as I realized when I was contacted recently by a company that… Continue reading

Avert your eyes, if you must, and move on to the next paragraph, but I’m going to kick off this installment of the tea book column with a book about coffee. Gasp. It’s called Coffee Gives Me Superpowers: An Illustrated Book about the Most Awesome Beverage on Earth and it’s by Ryoko Iwata. I mention… Continue reading

When I wrote a profile of tea expert and author Babette Donaldson a while back, I somehow overlooked one of her works—a tea-themed book for younger readers. It could just as easily be described as a book for both children and adults. Titled Fun With Tea: Activities for Tea Loving Adults to Share With Their… Continue reading

The avalanche of tea books seems never-ending, with many of them highlighted on this blog by my fellow writer Bill Lengeman (his latest: recent and upcoming tea books roundup ). At some point, my mind starts to overheat, the gears begin to grind, and I call out, “Enough!” The next question that comes to mind… Continue reading

In recent years it seems that, if you’re the head of a successful tea company, the thing to do is write a book. If you don’t believe it, we’ll start with exhibit A, a recent volume that fits the bill. Then we’ll move onto exhibits B and C, which have been out for a while… Continue reading