Pyewacket tells me that book reviews constitute expressing myself, which I generally prefer not to do in public 
, but anyway, here's another one. Hopefully the karmic good of letting others know about a great book outweighs the karmic burden of expressing myself. Or something. Anyway...
Wade Davis wrote "One River" (as well as "The Serpent and the Rainbow", and "The Clouded Leopard"). They're all great books, but this review is about "One River". In it, he documents two main threads: his own explorations of the South American continent for the origins of the coca leaf (the source of cocaine), and his mentor Richard Evans Schultes' explorations of South America in search of any and all knowledge of the indigenous populations' uses of hallucinogenic plants. Both Davis and Schultes are "ethnobotanists"... researchers into the uses of plants by indigenous (and not-so-indigenous) people. They both learned an enormous amount about South America; a small (but wonderful) fragment of that knowledge is passed on to us in "One River".
Unfortunately, I can't find my favourite quote, but it is something along the following lines: "I learned to judge the difficulty of the upcoming climb [to the high ridges of the Andes] by how many handfuls of coca leaves our guide stuffed in his mouth at the start: he always said the climb was 'very easy', but one handful meant an easy climb; four handfuls meant we had a very hard slog ahead of us."
Along with ethnobotany, the reader gets a unique view of life as a native of South America: the good (the happiness and the fullfilling life of the natives), the bad (the lack of modern medicine and so on), and the ugly (whether the horrors initiated by the "civilized" Europeans, or the horrors initiated by the "uncivilized" natives). At any event, a book well worth reading and re-reading. If you are not an environmentalist by the end of this book, well... nothing will save you
.
(This is my journal, so I'm allowed to be totally subjective, right?)
Davis is (I'm proud to say) Canadian, and originally from British Columbia.
, but anyway, here's another one. Hopefully the karmic good of letting others know about a great book outweighs the karmic burden of expressing myself. Or something. Anyway...
Wade Davis wrote "One River" (as well as "The Serpent and the Rainbow", and "The Clouded Leopard"). They're all great books, but this review is about "One River". In it, he documents two main threads: his own explorations of the South American continent for the origins of the coca leaf (the source of cocaine), and his mentor Richard Evans Schultes' explorations of South America in search of any and all knowledge of the indigenous populations' uses of hallucinogenic plants. Both Davis and Schultes are "ethnobotanists"... researchers into the uses of plants by indigenous (and not-so-indigenous) people. They both learned an enormous amount about South America; a small (but wonderful) fragment of that knowledge is passed on to us in "One River".
Unfortunately, I can't find my favourite quote, but it is something along the following lines: "I learned to judge the difficulty of the upcoming climb [to the high ridges of the Andes] by how many handfuls of coca leaves our guide stuffed in his mouth at the start: he always said the climb was 'very easy', but one handful meant an easy climb; four handfuls meant we had a very hard slog ahead of us."
Along with ethnobotany, the reader gets a unique view of life as a native of South America: the good (the happiness and the fullfilling life of the natives), the bad (the lack of modern medicine and so on), and the ugly (whether the horrors initiated by the "civilized" Europeans, or the horrors initiated by the "uncivilized" natives). At any event, a book well worth reading and re-reading. If you are not an environmentalist by the end of this book, well... nothing will save you
.
(This is my journal, so I'm allowed to be totally subjective, right?)
Davis is (I'm proud to say) Canadian, and originally from British Columbia.
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
bort79:
Welcome to SG!!!
zork:
Thanks... glad to be here. I'll try to post something more personal at some point...