Celebrate January: National Hot Tea Month! International Tea Expert Spins Stories of Adventure in New Book

What happens when a young man growing up in Africa heads off to England to "find himself" -- only to land in the finest of tea houses receiving classical training as a tea taster?

Award-winning author Barry W. Cooper shares with us his path to becoming the "Indiana Jones of Tea" in Silver Spoons, Mad Baboons, and Other Tales of Tea (240 pp., $24.95, ISBN 0977739716). Cooper won a 2008 IPPY Independent Publishing Award for this mix of adventure and tea education.

Joe Simrany, President of the Tea Association of the USA, says, "Barry Cooper's name has become synonymous with tea. A larger-than-life figure, Barry has helped shape the tea industry as we know it today and will surely become part of the folklore remembered for generations to come. Filled with insight and adventure, this memoir reads like a page-turning novel and will be enjoyed by anyone with even a passing interest in tea."

The stories in Silver Spoons cover a range of territory, from the early "Safari Encounters" years in Africa to Cooper's encounters in hostile territories when searching for the perfect herbs and teas in "Guns and Golf" and "Flight Out of a War Zone."

A young man's initial training in the formal world of tea is detailed in "Lipton Training," insights gleaned from his time spent at Boulder's Celestial Seasonings are revealed, and his subsequent decision to leave and build his own Colorado tea company are chronicled as well. Mixed into the storytelling the Tea Master also shares his expertise on teas from all major countries of origin: India, China, Formosa, Ceylon, Japan and Kenya.