When Vita and I dropped down in Guatemala City, I didn’t know a damn thing about the bean: where it was grown, the politics that drive it, the human factor that shapes it, let alone the variety of ways it is processed, tested, sold, shipped, and ritualized. I simply knew that I adored the stuff when it was prepared in a careful manner. Now, with trips to farms in Ethiopia, Brazil, and Guatemala and with several thousand of my own words under my belt I can honestly say — I still really don’t know a damn thing about the bean. But I am happy to refer authors who do. Here are a couple of books that might not make The New York Times‘ bestsellers list, but certainly will give you a slight peek inside the dynamic world of coffea arabica.

When I received an advance copy of JavaTrekker by Dean Cycon, I was beside myself with excitement. I felt like I had found my mentor: someone who had spent the last decade dotting around the globe searching for remarkable beans and looking for gritty adventure. I immediately got on the phone with his publicist and asked if we could schedule a one pot dinner in Seattle. They said yes — just midway through the book and I already had an opportunity to sit down with Dean over bowls of Guatemalan Suban-ick! Then they canceled. I sighed and kept reading.

Dean has captured something rare and lovely, and if you want to know about the people who grow coffee, read it. I predict you will be quickly hooked with stories about the jackal man in Harrar that feeds the terrifying creatures raw meat from his own mouth, the coffee region in Papua New Guinea where certain farmers still process the cherry (ripe coffee) by sucking the fruit from the bean, and a delightful village in Indonesia that offers our hero a woman for the evening in trade for higher coffee prices. But if you are like me you will be a bit weighed down and ultimately tire of the self-congratulatory tone of his adventures. It starts out slowly but eventually builds to a full-on opera about the merits of Dean: the bridge he built, the water he provided, the water buffalo named after him, the firstborn named after him, the college he funded — in the end it becomes a little much. My hat does go off to the man, as he has made a remarkable impact, and I sure hope he changes his mind and joins us for dinner in Seattle. I would genuinely like to eat stew, drink Guatemalan wine, and hear about that Indonesian girl.

A brand new book, and yes, another one pot dinner invitation (they said yes as well) hit the shelves last month with the grandiose title God in a Cup. This is the tale of a self described late-blooming adventurer who decides to get the scoop on the “third wave” coffee movement after researching a piece on baristas for The New York Times. The central drama in this approachable account is that of specialty coffee’s most laureled god-child: the Geisha bean. Reputedly originating from a mythical wild coffee forest in the highlands of Ethiopia, this peculiar long and narrow bean eventually found its way to Costa Rica and Panama where at extreme altitudes it produces a spare crop of the most delicate, frenzy-inducing, transformative (and yes, over-hyped) coffee on the globe. This past year, the top lots of Geisha sold for over $100/pound — almost 50 times the cost of some of the finest specialty coffee on the market!

While weaving together the soap opera drama of Panama’s vaunted treasure, Michaela Weissman offers a poignant 3,000-foot view of the very complex coffee market, circling in closer on the niche “third-wavers” and landing spot down in the laps of three personalities that have thus far defined the new movement. Third-wave? This doesn’t refer to feminist coffee or the riot grrrl movement, but instead to the rise of hundreds of small independent coffee shops that have grown plump in the long shadow of Starbucks. Roasters and baristas who have focused on unerring quality, direct source coffees, and fancy brewing gizmos like the clover machine (which is now famously owned by Starbucks).

I must admit that what I enjoyed most about her handsome book is also what made me squirm a little: the US weekly-like coverage of the quirky personalities shaping the movement. Duane Sorenson of Stumptown takes a keen, almost intimate beating; Geoff Watts of Intelligentsia is made to seem like a swashbuckling pirate; and we end up knowing way too much about Peter Giuliano’s broken marriage and subsequent solitary life. I have been learning bits and pieces about these gentlemen over the past year and it was a bit like going from a first date to divorce court in seconds flat — exhilarating but a little disconcerting. These fellows aren’t movie stars, but now they understand the tabloid sting of overexposure.

I have an immense amount of respect for both authors. The coffee road is bumpy as hell, spiritually challenging, and filled with more murkiness than clarity. Yet somehow both Weismann and Cycon have etched out smart, funny, and at times, crystalline thoughts on the maddeningly complex world of coffee.

As long as Grist lets me, I will throw out some thoughts from the coffee road, and the other “tablemaking” adventures in which I routinely find myself. Ethiopia is considered the birthplace of coffee (although Yemen likes to take credit as well) and many a book could be written about what separates coffee production in Ethiopia from the rest of the bean-producing countries. Coffee is essential to the culture — over 50 percent of the crop stays in country. It is not a colonial crop, and the passionate relationship to the bean results in some unprecedented global showdowns. But today I am pondering the tension between the two main stimulants in the land of Sheba.

Khat (pronounced chaat), or any of the 30 names it commonly goes by, is a leafy green bush that is native to East Africa. The leaves of the plant are chewed by a large sector of the East African population — khat is sold roadside, in cafes, in small villages, and on most city blocks in Addis Ababa. It has been called a “mild cocaine” and compared to ephedra and diet pills. Reportedly, it has been used widely in Ethiopia before coffee was discovered by the fair shepherd Kaldi. During a one-pot feast in Addis, coffee world celebrity Tadesse Meskela commented, “You can tell a khat farm from a coffee farm by one simple fact — the khat farmer will have a concrete home and a satellite dish; the coffee farmers still live in mud huts.” Below is a khat ceremony I happened to catch on film — I cleverly edited myself out of the chewing ritual just in case the DEA decided to detain me à la Amy Winehouse.

khat ceremony (also spelled chat, quat, etc) from hebberoy on Vimeo.

The ritual I filmed is filled with fervor and happiness, and it’s not dissimilar to the traditional coffee ceremony that millions of Ethiopians take part in daily. These gentlemen are coffee pickers, and they rely on khat to get through the long, grueling, repetitive hours of the harvest. The shaky translation of the khat ceremony I received confirmed that they are thanking God for khat, for the joy it gives them, for the energy and strength it instills.

But coffee plants are being routinely ripped out of the ground in Harrar, Yirgacheffe, Sidamo, and many lesser known growing regions. If you have tasted an excellent Harrar, you are likely devastated at the thought of any loss of this bean — Harrar has the other-worldly brilliance of a well-crafted Amarone or Sauterne. It is a treasure.

Coffee is a stimulant that our Western sensibility can accept, and khat seems at first blush to be a bad thing: a harmful, tragic drug on the rise. Yet khat is filled with vitamin C, appears to be no more addictive than coffee, and is generally accepted as part of East African culture. Khat farmers can support their families, while coffee farmers struggle to survive. It is hard to determine, but the Ethiopian government seems to support the increase in khat production — critics say that the government is making generous sums on the valuable export and any regulation is unlikely, due to the remarkable cash flow into the political coffers — which, of course, sounds perfectly familiar. Other critics site khat as a cause of severe water shortages in the highlands, and in neighboring Yemen, khat production is said to consume 40 percent of the irrigation resources.

These are just a few of the issues raised in the debate between khat and coffee. When I sat at dinner with Tadesse, sharing the food of Lent, I asked him if he chewed khat. “Of course. I chewed it every day for fifteen years,” he said with a chuckle, but now he has stopped. I pushed a little harder, trying to gauge if he had stopped for health reasons or ethical concerns. “Khat was part of my life as a young man,” Meskela commented with a large smile. The other coffee farmers and coffee politicos at the table laughed knowingly, as if a leafy green binge was not much different than a bout of heavy drinking.