Reviewed at the Times:

There’s a great story to be told about the success of Starbucks. But we’ll have to wait to hear it from somebody other than Taylor Clark. This is a shame because Clark is an enthusiastic young writer who has the seat of his intellectual pants hooked on the horns of an interesting conflict. He both appreciates the 'Starbucks experience' (whose advantages elude many of us 60-year-olds), and he deplores the very existence of a large, omnipresent, profitable corporate store chain (whose disadvantages elude many of us 60-year-olds, especially if we made a timely purchase of Starbucks stock for our retirement portfolios).

This review is worth reading because of the reviewer. The book sounds interesting, but the reviewer is nice and crotchety. He very clearly does not "get" Starbucks, and he gets quite testy with Clark's book for not explaining the phenomenon to him. At one point, Clark cites a sociologist who explains that neutral public spaces are declining, and the reviewer says, "I beg to differ. It's called a bar."