STARBUCKED is the first book to explore the incredible rise of the Starbucks Corporation and the caffeine-crazy culture that fuelled its success. Part Fast Food Nation, part social history, STARBUCKED combines investigative heft with witty cultural observation. How did Starbucks become an international juggernaut? What made the company so beloved that more than 40 million customers visit every week, yet so loathed that protestors have firebombed its stores? Why did Americans suddenly become willing to pay $4.50 for a cup of coffee? And why did the world follow? Taylor Clark provides an objective, meticulously reported look at how Starbucks manipulates psyches and social habits to snare loyal customers, and why many of the things we think we know about the coffee chain are false.

Part "Fast Food Nation," part "Bobos in Paradise," STARBUCKED combines investigative heft with witty cultural observation in telling the story of how the coffeehouse movement changed our everyday lives, from our evolving neighborhoods and workplaces to the ways we shop, socialize, and self-medicate.
In STARBUCKED, Taylor Clark provides an objective, meticulously reported look at the volatile issues like gentrification and fair trade that distress activists and coffee zealots alike. Through a cast of characters that includes coffee-wild hippies, business sharks, slackers, Hollywood trendsetters and more, STARBUCKED explores how America transformed into a nation of coffee gourmets in only a few years, how Starbucks manipulates psyches and social habits to snare loyal customers, and why many of the things we think we know about the coffee commodity chain are false.
""Starbucked" is ...smart cultural criticism minus any academic gobbledygook. Mr. Clark is quite funny as he dryly sends up the excess of the corporate behemoth, and Starb"u"cked is an entertaining, highly readable book....Full of cocktail-party-worthy tidbits." --Adelle Waldman, "New York Observer"