THE HIGH CHURCH OF STARBUCKS | PAGE 2 OF 2 And so we open Schultz's book to Chapter 1 and find ourselves taking a dutiful trot through our hero's working-class Brooklyn past. His downtrodden blue-collar father never made more than $20,000 a year and the family lived in government-subsidized housing, a state of affairs that seems to have imbued young Howard with an intense drive to succeed. In his late 20s, working in sales for a housewares company in New York City, Schultz paid a visit to a client firm called Starbucks, then a small Seattle purveyor of coffee beans. It was love at first sight. Some people have a knack for instant conversion, and Schultz is apparently one of them. He's a man who lives via revelation, not analysis, and he follows up on each epiphany with unwavering conviction. "On the five-hour plane trip back to New York the next day, I couldn't stop thinking about Starbucks," he writes. "It was like a shining jewel. I took one sip of the watery airline coffee and pushed it away. Reaching into my briefcase, I pulled out the bag of Sumatra beans, opened the top, and sniffed ... By the time I landed at Kennedy Airport, I knew in my heart that this was it." A year later he was working at Starbucks, and a second epiphany followed shortly thereafter: On a trip to Italy, Schultz developed a mad crush on espresso bars. Starbucks, he realized instantly, must shift its focus from beans to espresso drinks. He shared his revelation with the folks back in Seattle: They were unmoved. He left the company, only to return several years later with partners and a big, fat check: Starbucks was his. "In the ethical vacuum of this era, people long to be inspired," Schultz writes "Even if it's just a movie, or a TV program, or a great cup of coffee, they want a break from the negative noise that inundates us all ... When five million people a week seek out a Starbucks store and wait in line for an espresso drink, when customers return several times each week, they're not just coming for the coffee. They're coming for the feeling they get when they're there." This is how Schultz sees the company he has built. I don't know about anyone else, but I don't go to Starbucks for the "feeling." I go for the kick-ass coffee. Yet the book is so full of this kind of baloney that it begins to appear that Schultz actually believes it. I found myself growing fond of this naive character who dashes about making deals and spouting corny, heartfelt nonsense on these chlorine-free pages. He is a gung-ho fellow who writes of a partner: "We fed off each other's energy, like two kids getting ready to build the world's biggest fort." Here is a sweet corporate hero. The only problem is, it's just not true. Let me tell a story. A year ago, I wrote a long piece about Starbucks for a prominent business magazine. I attended employee training sessions, I met with competitors, I used up a dozen cassettes interviewing Starbucks executives. The company was impressive, but I also thought there was something amusingly overzealous and holier-than-thou in its approach to what was, after all, the business of selling an expensive, habit-forming beverage. The company also took offense at any comparison to other chain retailers, from Wal-Mart to McDonald's. Rather than seeing themselves as particularly able competitors in the food and drink business, they insisted they were benevolent coffee educators, spreading good feeling, creating communities, giving people a break from that awful "negative noise." In the course of my reporting, I was granted an interview with Schultz. He was tall and youthful, but he also had a kind of free-floating nervous energy that made me anxious. I think now that he was expecting the story to be a big, wet kiss, and he took one look at the shy, pregnant reporter scribbling in a steno pad and decided he needn't exert himself. Wet kisses are common in business journalism, and Starbucks has been showered with them. He paid little attention to my actual questions, preferring to riff on his favorite themes of "passion" and "dreams." He seemed distracted and slightly bored, showing just enough actual charm to suggest that it could be turned on and off at will. I find the facile use of charm scarier than the total lack of it. It was not, from my perspective, a good interview. The story I subsequently produced wasn't nasty, but it wasn't a wet kiss. The night the magazine came out, the phone rang in my kitchen, and it was Schultz. He was no longer distracted or bored. He quoted sections of the story he disliked, and he accused me of inaccuracy and cynicism. He objected to the fact I had mentioned the word "addiction" in a story awash in caffeine. Howard Schultz was really mad. I was dumbstruck. He should call in the morning, I said, when I'd collected my thoughts. He never did. Off to build the next fort, I guess. But the call was highly irregular: The CEO of a powerful company, a guy with a net worth in the nine-figure range, had called to berate a young writer for what was, at the very worst, a lukewarm story (part of which, by the way, someone deemed complimentary enough to appear in his book's publicity materials.) To use his own boyish lingo, what a bully. But the call confirmed what I had suspected: Schultz -- and Starbucks -- are not as gentle as they would like us to believe. Not if you get in their way. In Schultz's book, however, you find nary a hint that he can be shrewd, calculating or intimidating. You find only an idealistic entrepreneur bearing trays of cappuccinos to poor Yuban-swilling America, all the while being attacked by scoffers, naysayers and mean little writers. It's OK to be tough. I just wish both the company and its CEO would own up to it. Corporate chieftains imprint their personalities on the companies they run, and that very same quality of masked aggression -- coupled with the need to be universally loved -- characterizes Starbucks. Starbucks is a magnificent company: No one is better at turning coffee, milk and scones into mountains of cash. And Starbucks does that by offering a quality product with great consistency, and by taking every opportunity to grow. Some fine things can also be said about the company's management practices: It offers health insurance to part-timers and stock options to all. What's not to like? For me, it's that New Age dishonesty. A frequently voiced criticism of Starbucks has been that it picks on the little guy, opening up next to thriving independent coffeehouses and taking their customers. "We channel our competitive energies against rivals far larger than ourselves, like the big packaged foods companies, not against local mom-and-pop coffeehouses." Schultz responds loftily in his book. "Our mission is to expand the number of people who appreciate great coffee, to make it ever more widely available and enjoyed." Starbucks has certainly improved the quality of America's coffee. But, it has also threatened many a mom-and-pop coffeehouse: Simply by opening up next door, it channels competitive energies against them. How can it pretend otherwise? I have it on record from the Starbucks senior vice president of real estate that the presence of cappuccino signs in the neighborhood makes a site more attractive to Starbucks. Maybe they don't intend to be predatory and maybe they honestly don't think that they are. But lions can't live without eating a few lambs. All of this is perfectly fine; it's a free market. But don't breathe the word predatory to Schultz: "It is painful to hear such words," he writes. "Starbucks is not some faceless corporate entity. It's me and other individuals ... who have defied conventional wisdom and built a company based on passion and values." Passion? Values? Wake up and smell the Frappuccino. Starbucks was built on coffee. When a corporation is pulling in a billion a year and opening a store a day, it can't expect to be cast as the Little Company That Could. Where does it come from, this New Age idea that you can be both tycoon and pure, uncompromised force of light? Count your blessings; enjoy your supremacy; relish the fruits of your vision, your competence, your craftiness. While I like nothing better than a Starbucks latte, both the company and its CEO make me appreciate those cynical capitalists who don't pretend they're doing the Lord's work. SALON | Nov. 24, 1997  Jennifer Reese is a writer who lives in San Francisco.