ITALIAN COFFEE: RETELLING THE STORY.

On December 4, 2019, the New York Times published an article describing Italian efforts to make espresso part of the UNESCO list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The piece details how essential coffee is for Italians not only for its culinary value but, most importantly, for the role it has played in creating political, social, and cultural communities all around the country: "I can assure you that it if [sic] weren't for Italian espresso and the social ritual of espresso coffee, Italy wouldn't exist as we know it," said Massimo Cerulo, a sociologist at the Università degli Studi di Perugia. "We cannot separate espresso the drink from the social ritual, because it is a routine, a socially shared practice." Coffee was also a harbinger of democracy. "The public sphere as we know it was born in coffeehouses," he noted, adding that Italy had some of the world's oldest and most beautiful coffeehouses, like Venice's "Florian," Turin's "Al Bicherin,"[sic] or Rome's "Antico Caffe [sic] Greco," which all opened in the 18th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]