Wow, what a find for home schooling families and history teachers!

This reprint of a 1901 source reader in American history is the first in a series of four chronological readers that provide readings by the people of that time peoiod.

In Colonial Children you will read articles by Christopher Columbus, Two Italien Gentlemen, Governor John White, Captian John Smith, Anne Bradstreet, Colonel William Byrd, John Fontaine, Cotton Mather, Govenor William Bradford, Ben Franklin and others. These prominent people have left us with their impressions of Colonial America's discovery, wilderness,the natives, its growth, its children and its schools from their own journals, books and news articles.

The book is annotated to include pertinant historical data about who the writers were or where they lived. The writings were from 1000 AD to about 1790. The series also has a book about the Revolution and the Civil war.

Read this book with Terence Mckenna's Food of the Gods. They work well together. Don't be afraid of the subject. If you've read the primary literature avoid this book unless your running a "trip" mission and you want to turn people on. These two men are giants on the subject. Forget the review. Buy the book out a repect. Schultes and Hoffman were trippy before most of us were born. P.S. All that God stuff, it's importmant but it was the thrill seeker in all of us that got us here.

The spiritual powers of healing and hallucinogenic plants are surveyed anew in Plants Of The Gods, a revised and expanded edition of a true classic which paring color photos of the plants with a wealth of solid botanical details. This revision covers the traditions of different cultures which use the plants, uses of hallucinogens in sacred rites and prayers, and solid coverage of the rituals themselves.

Plants of the Gods is a condensed ethnobotanical encyclopedia of hallucinogenic drugs with nicely illustrated cultural/art/chemical information . This book illustrates why these psychoactive plants have been so important, nay, a necessity of primordial human consciousness and experience because of their medicinal, teleportal, and communicative capabilities. It even includes a beautifully annotated color-picture field guide lexicon. It begins with a history of plant hallucinogens and then explores their cremonial/ritualistic use in various cultures around the world, creating a sense of their cultural AND artistic importance in other societies that ACTUALLY RESPECT and don't abuse them. Plants of the Gods leaves you with a sense of respect for these plants when you realize that smoking pot in some basement just to break rules is like a rites of passage sacrament practiced by many tribal cultures who know the importance of this experience which we seem to have neglected and even outlawed. Thoroughly descriptive, yet easily digestible,it reads more as a quick refrence guide /bedtime story than a book-"book", but is captivating and informatively engaging at the same time.

The late Albert Goldman has written another book that is hardly worth reading. In "Sound Bites" he collects some of his articles written over the last two decades and because of that we have already read all the stuff that this book contains. For example, the chapter on Elvis Presley has been published in Goldman's disgusting book "ELVIS" (1981) and the chapter on The Beatles has been published in the reprehensible book "The lives of John Lennon" (1988). What you can read in those (and most other "Goldman-trash-bio's" )books, you can read again in "Sound Bites". Goldman writes in his introduction that "one word can be worth a thousand pictures". Goldman himself obviously didn't understood what he wrote there, because he needs so many words to tell virtually nothing but his own traditionel negative opinion on the subject. Goldman does not describe his subjects, but he slates them down and he never shows respect for his subject. Then why this need to write biographies,Mr.Goldman? He probably needed the money and that's another reason why you should not buy this book.