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NEW
An addiction to tea
"Tea: A History of Addiction, Exploitation and Empire," by Roy Moxham (Carroll & amp; Graf, $21)
Roy Moxham understands tea -- especially as an addiction. Hired on, in London, to manage a tea plantation in Nyasaland when he was 21, he learned the trade from the ground up. That was in 1960. Now comes the consummation of his fascination, a very seriously researched history of tea -- or, rather, of tea and its role in and relationships to things British. Other European nations took to it earlier, but it was Britain in which it became a universal obsession, a huge industry and the cause of plunder, wars and adventures. Moxham, who in 2001 wrote "The Great Hedge of India," traces all this diligently, cogently and compellingly.
Staff and wire reports