Great book for you plant nerds out there...a book edited by the late great Richard Schultes?...what more can you ask for?

This book is a great compilation from leading ethnobotanists, describing the field, and bringing pertinent issues to the fore. It is an excellent collection, with well-renowned ethnobotanists like Plotkin, Balick, and Naranjo. It is an excellent source, and tells all about ethnobotany, the science that may preserve human existence now, and in the future.

"The Healing Forest" has been selected for listing in "Religion and Psychoactive Sacraments: An Entheogen Chrestomathy." http://www.csp.org/chrestomathy

Technical, but excellent. Photos are stunning

This book is a very extensive source of information about plant hallucinogens. It gives historical backgrounds on the plants used as hallucinogens. It also gives very extensive informaton about the molecules that are responsible for their hallucinogenic activity. It covers the molecular structures and their abundance in the plant sources. There is also information about how the plants are used as ethnobotanicals. I would suggest obtaining this book to anyone interested in ethnobotanicals.

This contains the history behind the famous glass flower collections at the Peabody Museum. It is packed full of beautiful photographs and you will be amazed how realistic (and unlike glass) these creations are! Simply excellent.

"Hallucinogenic Plants" has been selected for listing in "Religion and Psychoactive Sacraments: An Entheogen Chrestomathy." http://www.csp.org/chrestomathy

If you like plants and the ethnobotanical uses of them (like I do), along with exploration and adventure, then this book is for you. Hipolito Ruiz was a Spanish botanist in Peru and Chile from 1777-1788. Along with all the many hardships which he encountered back in those days, he observed and recorded the many different kinds of medicinal and non-medicinal plants which the natives used. It truly is a fascinating account of his travels and what it was actually like in the 1700's. Along with being an adventure in ethnobotanical exploration , it is also a cultural portrayal of the peoples who lived there. I also enjoyed the appendix at the end of the book which lists the medicinal plants in alphabetical order which are mentioned in the text. Maybe this book should be required reading for medical students (?). Could be a cure for cancer, aides, etc. down there (!)

"The Sacred Mushroom Seeker" has been selected for listing in "Religion and Psychoactive Sacraments: An Entheogen Chrestomathy." http://www.csp.org/chrestomathy

Richard Schultes has once again managed to combine startling scientific intellect with storytelling prowess. His account of plants and practices in the Amazon is a compelling account of ethnobotany, showing us both that exciting popular literature does not have to be dumbed down an sensationalistic and that scientific work can be interesting enough for lay people. His tone is open and easy, which facilitates understanding of the sometimes complex subject matter. Overall, he exhibits his scientific knowledge through his artistic talent. The subject matter is riveting and sweeping. Schultes captures the essence of the Amazon people without the usual ethnocentric sterotyping. He is a model for both our commercial explorations and our treatment of other peoples. His scope of the subject is broad: it encapsulates the scientific minutiae as well as the anthropological background and mythologies and historical contexts. His student Wade Davis continues in Schultes's justifiably. Take time to appreciate this great man, Richard Schultes, as he is not able to persist in his role as an active scientist.

One River reads like an adventure story, a character sketch, a history, and a PhD dissertation. How Davis is able to hold so many disparate strands together so well is a true marvel. That he is an excellent writer surely helped but so did his choice of topics-all quite fascinating.

Rarely does one pick up a book, especially non-fiction, that cannot be set aside. This book glues your hands and you won't be able to shake it until you've finished. Then you'll wish there were more.

In the broadest terms, One River is a biography of Davis's mentor, Richard Evans Schultes. I had become familiar with Schultes's work when researching hallucinogens. Well-known in that particular field, he is renowned generally as the godfather of ethnobotany. Tracing any strand in modern botany you'll find him again and again. He was incredibly prolific and a born adventurer. Many species of plants are named after him because his colleagues so highly respected him.

Davis recounts his personal experiences under Schultes-the strange days at Harvard, the mission Schultes sent him on to study cocaine in 1970s Columbia-and then proceeds to unravel his hero's own story. One needs to read the book to appreciate the twists and turns of this plot but let's just say Schultes has taken all drugs, lived with all new world tribes, and regularly voted for Queen Elizabeth II in presidential elections. In spite of his noted eccentricities few scientists could claim such respect or accomplishment.

In the early 40s he was employed by U.S. government to find and/or cultivate a new world source of high quality rubber. A decade of work almost resulted in a better rubber that would enrich the people of Central America and ensure the U.S. a constant supply of this industrial mainstay. Please read almost... a single guffaw by some legislators destroyed all this work and left us in the lurch of depending on Southeast Asia for our rubber, a precarious situation to be sure.

Throughout the book, the main backdrop is the Amazon. One of the reasons I had trouble putting the book down was because it transported me to that exotic place. Though I was doing my same old routine, I could jump into the narrative and feel like I was on an intrepid vacation never sure what the next bend in the river would bring: menacing or friendly natives, a new species of orchid, other wanderers, a potently hallucinogenic plant?

For a thoughtful and engaging read one can do no better.

This book is a beyond-detail-rich look at the enterprise of ethnobotany in an extraordinary region of threatened biological wealth, through a biography of one of the field's greatest figures. It is a planet of a book, a book to get lost in like the rainforest itself; I read it in deeper and deeper skims to take it in. I felt like Davis was giving me, not some facts about the Amazon, but a transferred chunk of the reality of the place itself.

Curiously, I was advised that this would not be a good book to recommend to a family member who is very interested in biology and in indigenous cultures - because of all the objectionable hallucinogens in the book, which are typical of the region. (Once all the remnants of the peoples discussed have been converted to alcoholism, doubtless it will become permissible to know about them...) That would be one reason to support this book: it is a window out of our preconceptions, or at least out of the the ones that are uninformed or that don't know they need to *be* informed. This book is worth sitting down with, and worth passing on.

"One River" will take you on a journey that you will never forget. It will introduce you to one of the twentieth century's most remarkable men--Richard Evans Schultes, as well as one of the world's most fascinating places--the Amazon.

The book is the story of the work of Schultes and two of his students, including the author Wade Davis. It will take you as close as you can ever be to lost cultures and lost ecosystems along with cultures and ecosystems that are very much endangered. Wade Davis is a champion of both human and ecological diversity. "One River" is probably the most eloquent testament to ethnic and biological diversity I've ever read.

As the modern world encroaches on every last nook and cranny of this beautiful earth, "One River" serves as a primer about what once was and about the price we pay as we lose one more species, or one more human culture forever.

This book is an adventure story. It is a story of incredible academic accomplishment. The term academic, with its connotations of being hopelessly removed from the real world does not apply here. Schultes and his students could not be more connected to the real world.

"One River" is the story of man and nature and how the two interact, each forever changing the other. Read this book and then tell your friends about it. While it is hard to make such a claim (there are so many good books), I'd have to say this is my favorite book.

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.