After being granted a special advance read on this book, I am sorry to say it was not what I expected. I did re-read the description to see if I totally misread that, but found the book not totally matching it. I expected this book to tell the history of the cafes themselves up to the present, with historical points in which they found themselves. I found that the book does tell some about the cafes, but the cafe gets lost within the history of the country and the people. To me, there was just a lot more history about the country the cafe was in and the history of the people living there. Sometimes I would forget about the cafe all together. I thank NetGalley and I thank Pen & Sword for the advance read.