The Coffee Bureau sought to brew interest outside the workplace, too. Its slogan, "Make that one for the road coffee," however, riled ministers. They asserted in sermons that it encouraged drinking and driving. The Bureau quickly switched to "Stay alert, stay alive--make it coffee when you drive," a clear precursor to the "Drive alert, arrive alive" campaign now used by the National Sleep Foundation.

Legends say frisky goats prompted the discovery of coffee's energizing effects. Kaldi, an Ethiopian herder, supposedly chewed the red berries and leaves that made his goats dance, and soon spouted poetry and song himself.

By the tenth century, monks drank coffee to help them stay awake for their nighttime vigils, just as contemporary shift workers do. Coffee also was seen as a medication, and quickly filtered into everyday life. In this meticulously-researched, and superbly-written book, investigative journalist Mark Pendergrast tracks coffee's history over time, around the world, and across cultures, exploring its impact on local and national economies, politics, and social relationships.

Coffee, he points out, is the foremost delivery system for caffeine, the world's most widely-used psychoactive drug. Some 90 percent of the U.S. population habitually consume some form of caffeine.

"Sleep," "alertness," "insomnia," and "stimulant," curiously, are not terms listed in the book's index, although Pendergrast examines all of these topics, as well as health issues, throughout the book. At the start of the twentieth century, he reports, Charles Post claimed Postum, the coffee substitute he invented, would put those with "coffee nerves" on the "road to Wellville."

Experts still disagree on the nature and severity of possible adverse health effects of caffeine, but consensus opinion holds that it is safe for most people to consume reasonable amounts, up to, say, two or three cups a day. The American Psychiatric Association includes "caffeine-induced sleep disorder," typically insomnia, as one of several caffeine-related maladies in the fourth edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a clinician's bible.

While caffeine is no substitute for sleep, its ability to promote alertness prompts continuing interest in finding the right amounts and best times to take it when sleep is unavoidably curtailed. Military troops engaging in modern round-the-clock warfare are a prime example, one reason the military is at the forefront of caffeine research today. Pilots, truckers, rescue workers, doctors on call, and perhaps even the sleep-deprived general public also may benefit from these studies.

The book includes an illustrated mini-history of coffee, with clips from popular television commercials, magazine ads, cartoons, and photos. One photo shows a New York restaurant owner who drinks 50 cups of coffee a day, but claims he sleeps quite well. A cartoon depicts "Too Much Coffee Man" who, on meeting his coffee maker, professes, "You inspire me to rise from bed, motivate me through my morning rituals, and sustain me through years of tortuous vapidity."

You won't need coffee to keep you awake while you savor this stimulating book.