My husband and I have spent the last 21 months building our own house, from the foundation all the way to the finish woodworking, doing about 80% of the work ourselves. I mention this not only because I am elated to be DONE with this project, rewarding though its been, but also because taking on a project like this has made a major, and I mean MAJOR dent in my available reading time. So it was with great enthusiasm that I have taken up deep, devoted reading again after an unusually long hiatus. And I can't think of too many other books in the last few years I've read with greater enthusiasm than James Norwood Pratt's New Tea Lover's Treasury.

This book has been unique to me in a couple of ways. For one thing, the author is quite personable. You feel, while reading, that you know the author quite well. He's funny and invites you into the book as though it's a club and you are a member - one of a fairly small group of people so enthusiastic about tea that you'd invest the money and time in reading a big book on the subject (in fact, he even states that in the preface). Another aspect of this book that has completely drawn me in is that he broaches the topic of tea in a way that illuminates it as being one of the trade commodities in the world, like sugar and tobacco and a few other notables, that has fundamentally changed the way the world works. That might sound unlikely until you stop to consider how big a role tea played in the opening of trade between China and the west hundreds of years ago, and the impacts that has on our contemporary world. Or how high agricultural espionage by corporate sponsored explorers coupled with good old fashioned observation and plant breeding in the jungles of India combined to wrest the world's major tea production from the protective domain of China, eventually catapulting India to become the world's largest producer of tea. Pratt refreshes you on events surrounding the economically paltry but ideologically gigantic tax upon tea drunk in the colonies that led up to the Boston Tea Party in a manner that I only wish my history teachers from elementary school onwards could have carried off (though, jokes aside, I'm indebted to several excellent teachers!). Detailed passages about sailing's technological innovation, which developed by necessity with expanding trade, (including a white knuckle recounting of a famous 1866 clipper ship race) are excellent side journeys that I think you will enjoy as well.

Aside from an excellent and truly entertaining overview of history from a tea oriented perspective, from its origins in the east and spread to the west, this is a book with numerous fascinating anecdotes about everything from tea itself (did you know that the prototype of Japanese matcha, the perfectly powdered stone ground green tea, originally hails from China?) to the porcelain it's drunk from (did you know that Bone China is so called because it contains a small amount of powdered bone?). It's too difficult in a review to even touch on all the fascinating details in this book, but it is marvelously compiled, beautifully written and will make you laugh aloud as frequently as you find yourself saying, "wow, I never knew that!"

Finally, for tea lovers, a history would not be enough. Pratt includes a full section of the book which he titles "The Treasury" which gives a broad and helpful background on a number of teas from all over the world, country by country and tea by tea, with further details on his (and the world's) favorites. Of further interest is his "dissertation on making tea" which gives brief notes and information on numerous things falling into that category, from kettles to steeping times to interesting notes on preparation of the world's major teas - black, green and oolong, along with helpful and a bit more specific notes about using a guywan, preparing tea in the Gong fu method, or observing English tea rituals. Especially helpful to novices to any of these techniques is the following encouraging advice, delivered with the qualities I most admire in any teacher who truly loves and wants to share his passion: "Be patient with yourself. Don't worry about 'doing it wrong.' It all becomes second nature soon enough."

I can recommend few books more highly than this one, regardless of subject matter. A happy and rather silly coincidence led me to pursue this book, and I'm delighted to have had him recommended to me by other reviewers here on Teaviews! I hope you'll read this book soon!

Jamie Teaviews.com Reviewer » Read more about this reviewer on Jamie's profile page. » Find a list of recent posts by Jamie.

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