Synopsis
"Enjoyable and insightful work was written as a tribute to the scientific achievements of Richard Evans Schultes, an Amazonia explorer active during 1940s-50s. Also relates explorations of the author and of Timothy Plowman, both Schultes' students. Intended for a popular audience"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 57.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1996-08-01 | | Edition Description: | Illustrated |
| Size | | Length: | 537 pages | | Height: | 9.8 in | | Width: | 6.8 in | | Thickness: | 1.5 in | | Weight: | 30.4 oz |
Publisher's Note
In 1974-75, Wade Davis and Tim Plowman traveled the length of South America, living among a dozen Indian tribes, collecting medicinal plants and searching for the origins of coca, the sacred leaf of the Andes and the notorious source of cocaine. It was a journey inspired and made possible by their Harvard mentor, Richard Evans Schultes, the most important scientific explorer in South America in this century, whose exploits rival those of Darwin and the great naturalist explorers of the Victorian age. In 1941, after having identified ololiuqui, the long-lost Aztec hallucinogen, and having collected the first specimens of teonanacatl, the sacred mushroom of Mexico, Schultes took a leave of absence from Harvard and disappeared into the Northwest Amazon of Colombia. Twelve years later, he returned from South America, having gone places no outsider had ever been, mapping uncharted rivers and living among two dozen Indian tribes. He collected some twenty thousand botanical specimens, including three hundred species new to science, and documented the invaluable knowledge of native shamans. The world's leading authority on plant hallucinogens, Schultes was for his students a living link to a distant time when the tropical rain forests stood immense, inviolable, a mantle of green stretching across entire continents. It was a world greatly changed by the time Davis and Plowman began their journey, nearly thirty years later, and changed further today.
This is an epic story in the grand tradition of scientific adventure--the landmark Amazon explorations of legendary botanist Richard Evans Schultes and his student, Wade Davis, that revealed the treasures of the rain forest.
Industry Reviews
"He writes magnificently, with verve when describing his many adventurous field trips, accurately and efficiently when telling science or history, and with vivid fantasy when portraying hallucinogenic trances."
New York Times Book Review - John Hemming (09/01/1996)
"The elsewhere untold story of Richard Schultes in particular outdoes Steven Spielberg."
Washington Post Book World - Stephan Schwartzman (02/02/1997)
"There is an extraordinary density to these pages. Davis covers history, anecdote, exploration, mythology, botany, and religion."
Literary Review - Carlos Mavroleon
"A fascinating narrative of the exploits of Harvard ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes, interwoven with the much more benign adventure of his student, author and ethnobotanist Davis....[A]n exceptional tale of 20th-century scientific exploration and a rousing travelogue to places both real and illusory."
Stoltz
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