Anyone who wishes to understand this mysterious corner of the world deserves Magdalena. It is a capacious, generous and illuminating book

After all our agonies, Wade Davis, through the evocative power of his writing and the clarity of his understanding, gives us all reason to once again love Colombia. That is the wonder of his book, which in many ways reads as a love letter to a nation

Davis stocks his lively narrative with piquant characters, dramatic historical set pieces, and lyrical nature writing. The result is a rich, fascinating study of how nature and a people shape each other

Shimmering... Never wincing from dark histories, yet never abandoning hope, Wade Davis shows us why Colombia stole his heart as a young traveller and holds it still

A magnificent, hugely important book, breathtaking in its scope and vision … a masterpiece … an epic journey across the nation and into its beating heart …essential reading for anyone wanting to understand Colombia

[Magdalena] is a rallying cry to save the Magdalena from the destructive effects of industrialisation, but it also aims to reset our impressions of the country as a whole... [Davis's] passion for Colombia is better expressed in the depth of information he delivers - and the poetic way in which he captures its extraordinary landscape. Those pondering a trip will be inspired to veer off the tourist path

Davis is a powerful, penetrating and immensely knowledgeable writer

Davis suffuses his reportage with a visionary tinge. But his subject more than warrants it

Magdalena is a revelatory and often enchanting book

This book is the culmination of a lifetime's work in the country and is suffused with a love and knowledge that only such long acquaintance can bring

Passionate and profoundly engaged... [Davis'] presentation of the great river as Colombia's Mississippi, its fountain of music, the source of its many contradictions...generates an impact that few travel books can muster.

Music and myth, commerce and colonialism, indigeneity and identity: Magdalena is as impressively exploratory in approach as it is encyclopaedic in scope

Meticulously researched, vivid in its scene-setting, fine-toothed in its sociopolitical analysis . . . Coffeeland lays bare the history and reality behind that cup of joe you're drinking.

How did a cup of coffee become the everyday addiction of millions? In this impressively wide-ranging, personality-filled history, Augustine Sedgewick untangles the routes that carried coffee from the slopes of El Salvador's volcanoes ... To enter Coffeeland is to visit a realm of ruthless entrepreneurs, hard-working laborers, laboratory chemists, and guerrilla fighters.

Capitalism has remade the global countryside in radical ways. Coffeeland brilliantly chronicles this most consequential revolution by telling the global history of one family. After reading Augustine Sedgewick's fast-paced book you will never be able to think about your morning coffee in quite the same way.

Coffeeland will set a new standard ... an innovative study of work, of the work involved to produce a drink needed by workers to keep working. Sedgewick treats coffee not so much as a material commodity but rather more like intangible energy ... provocative and convincing.