History, an absolutely fascinating look at the lengths the British went to in order to gain access to Chinese tea, and the ways in which tea made empire possible. The story is centered around Robert Fortune, a real life frontier botanist employed by the East India Company, who (despite internal wrangling within the Company as well as within the botanist world) ventured deep into the hinterlands of China and smuggled out tea plants and seeds to the rest of the world, breaking China’s monopoly. Rose also uses Britain’s tea trade as a jumping-off point to explore colonization, opium, and how tea made empire possible. My favorite quote: “What the world has sought when it sips a cup of tea is a mild effect, a high with neither lift nor letdown, a calming alertness, a drink of moods. What Fortune found in Wuyi Shan was Britain’s reigning temper: the thrill to conquer, but politely.”