Just bought "The True History of Tea" by Victor Mair who is a Sinologist and Erling Hoh. Looks like it will be interesting and in-depth. It has illustrations and some b&w photos.
http://www.amazon.com/True-History-Tea- ... 075&sr=8-1
I'm familiar with Victor Mair from another context (http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/)
I skimmed the book at a bookstore... it looks Ok to me, but didn't have a lot of information that seemed really interesting / relevant to the stuff I'm personally interested in... more historical context than information about how tea was produced / consumed historically, but again, I skimmed it very quickly, so I may have missed something.
One of these days I'll try to give it a more detailed read.
I skimmed the book at a bookstore... it looks Ok to me, but didn't have a lot of information that seemed really interesting / relevant to the stuff I'm personally interested in... more historical context than information about how tea was produced / consumed historically, but again, I skimmed it very quickly, so I may have missed something.
One of these days I'll try to give it a more detailed read.