Customer Reviews

One River

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"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.

Anyone still doubting the superiority of truth over fiction need only take this book to a quiet corner and start reading. Wade Davis relates the stories of two Richards, Schultes and Spruce, plus his own in their respective excursions in the upper Amazon. Schultes, Davis' Harvard mentor, spent many years there seeking medicinal plants and new sources of rubber when access to Asian resins were lost during World War II. No work of fiction, including Hollywood's almost trifling account in the film Medicine Man, can match the scope of what Schultes accomplished during his extensive travels. Schultes had the good sense to approach the Native American shamans with respect, dealing with them on their terms and not as a latter-day conquistador. They responded to his inquiries in kind, leading to countless new medicines for treating our "civilized" illnesses. He became a "depswa" - medicine man - sharing their rituals while gaining knowledge. Davis is able to use his close relationship with Schultes to provide an engrossing and detailed account of Schultes' career in the bush.

The second Richard is Schultes' own model. Richard Spruce came to the Upper Amazon from mid-Victorian England. Prompted by an inestimable source, Charles Darwin's account of the Beagle voyage, Spruce entered the Amazon country in 1849. Few of the celebrated explorers in Africa in the same period can match the perils Spruce faced and dealt with. As did his follower Schultes, Spruce avoided the overbearing colonialist image - his desires were achieved by finding new medicinal plants. Spruce dealt with the dispensers of drugs and their tales of visions incurred as an equal. In their turn they imparted valuable information leading to useful medicines. Clearly, both Schultes and Spruce operated as Davis stipulates: "botanists in the Amazon must come to peace with their own ignorance." As Schultes, Spruce and Davis himself demonstrate, the peaceful approach brings substantial rewards in information and experience.

Davis' own, modern, story enhances that of his mentor Schultes, carrying the research and adventure forward. Only the ability to travel further and faster than his teacher separates the two. Davis has a sensitive touch in describing the world of the Upper Amazon, its dense forests and often mysterious people. His grief at the loss of their culture is manifest, buttressed by a strong historical sense of what they once were. Certainly this account belies the image of the "detached" scientist scouring the forest's resources for personal gain. He is there to learn and to teach us. He accomplishes both with a fascinating narrative. This is a book to be treasured and read again. A single sitting with this book is but an introduction to this disappearing world. Read it and discover that adventure is not a lost experience.

This will be a very short review on a book that has long been with me. While working on a reproductive biology macaw research project climbing into the canopy of the Amazon each day for 3 months i found ONE RIVER one night piled amongst the research literature. Even though i had the Amazon literally ground into my bones after so many days of hard labor i could not put this book down each night reading by candle. Could one gourge on steak then still enjoy reading about cattle? This is simply a fascinating, and most well written book on arguably the most complex wonderful ecosystem as experienced by a most hard working curiously gifted individual. Do your soul a favor and read this book 5 times!!!

I know nothing about ethnobotany, but am a fan of adventure and sociology narratives about people and places. Davis merges these two themes with history, biography and writing that is so lyrical and heartfelt that his passion for his subject comes across on every page. Documenting his own explorations and those of his mentor, the famous ethnobotanist Richard SChultes, DAvis depicts the beauty and mystery that is the Amazon, and does it in an era when the area was yet to be despoiled by man and his pursuit of resources. I love adventure travel, but reading about real-life adventures that are done not for mere thrill seeking but have legitimate scientific, cultural and other values is always much more rewarding than reading adventure for its own sake. I have read this book three times and anticipate its appeal again drawing me back to its pages. Quite simply, this is one of the great books in the genre, and Davis is a great writer in any genre.

One River was one of the best books I have read in quite some time. As a Ph.D student in Botany, I was inspired by the accounts of Shultes, Plowman and Davis' journeys to the Amazon seeking tropical plants and learning from the people who have been using them for generations.. Davis has a rare ability to mix technical science writing with a deep knowledge of history, culture, and politics and make it flow into a coherent narrative. Any student of ecology, evolution, (especially of plants) will love this book as will people with an interest in the cultures and history of the Amazon basin.

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Take one vast, timeless rain forest. Season with sacred plants. Add thousands of Indians and one intrepid explorer. Cook at tropical temperature for 12 years. The astonishing and tasty result is Wade Davis' ONE RIVER.

In the late 1930's, Harvard ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes was responsible for major scientific breakthroughs regarding plant hallucinogens in Mexico. His next field assignment, to identify botanical sources of the deadly arrow poison, curare, immersed Schultes in the savage beauty of the Colombian rain forest and its indigenous Indian cultures. Totally captivated, Schultes remained there for the next 12 years.

This true story of Schultes' explorations is compelling, and he's a guide we gladly follow. Quietly heroic, Schultes thinks nothing of paddling thousands of miles down uncharted rivers, navigating white-water rapids that bend his boat in half, stepping on poisonous snakes, and contracting near-fatal tropical diseases. All the Indians he encounters accept him with alacrity, and within a few hours he is often half-naked, painted and feathered, ingesting sacred plants, singing and dancing with his new friends until the dawn. Not exactly what one expects from a politically ultra-conservative Harvard academician.

Like lianas in the jungle, ONE RIVER's many stories intertwine: the travels of Schultes' predecessor, Richard Spruce, whose spirit infused his own; the rise and fall of the ancient Inca Empire; Schultes' crucial impact on the development of wild rubber during the rubber crisis of World War II; adventurous field research on coca, the "divine leaf of immortality," by Schultes' students, author Wade Davis and Timothy Plowman; and the historic role Schultes played in launching the psychedelic revolution of the 60's.

As we wade deeper and deeper into the Amazon, magical efflorescences delight us: a legendary Blue Orchid; "river dolphins"; an ancient Inca city shaped like a puma; the Kogi tribe, who believe the sun weaves existence, like a cloth, on the loom of the earth. And in the shadows we confront the atrocities committed against the Indians on the rubber plantations of El Encanto ("the Enchantment").

Rich and vibrant, meticulously researched, ONE RIVER is a brilliant amalgam of natural science, history, anthropology, and one hell of an adventure story.

In the same way the Indians trace their lineage from the original Anaconda, or from the Son of the Sun, Wade Davis traces the ethnobotanical lineage of the teacher he reveres and the irreplaceable friend he has lost -- from Richard Spruce to Richard Evans Schultes to Timothy Plowman. Although, modestly, he fails to acknowledge his own position in the sacred lineage, we know better. Thousands of years ago an Inca ruler created a city embodying a puma. And Wade Davis wrote a book that's an Amazonian rain forest.

I have read this book fully three times over five years. I am still amazed at the wealth of detail, yet the subtle humor in Davis' descriptions of the plants and peoples of the Amazon basin. The book is so detailed that I think many people glaze over in trying to read it. I would say it helps to read it before and then after you visit any rainforest. It also gives you a whole different approach to medicine and healing. The shaman empathizes with a patient, and uses native plants on HIMSELF to approach the healing process. Then, illuminated regarding what course to follow, provides the patient with a very specific course of healing, often using other plant materials. Often dismissed in our American culture as superstition, these practices are fascinating to read about from an author who has travelled, observed, and done what we can only imagine, and who seems to believe otherwise.

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Take one vast, timeless rain forest. Season with sacred plants. Add thousands of Indians and one intrepid explorer. Cook at tropical temperature for 12 years. The astonishing and tasty result is Wade Davis' ONE RIVER.

In the late 1930's, Harvard ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes was responsible for major scientific breakthroughs regarding plant hallucinogens in Mexico. His next field assignment, to identify botanical sources of the deadly arrow poison, curare, immersed Schultes in the savage beauty of the Colombian rain forest and its indigenous Indian cultures. Totally captivated, Schultes remained there for the next 12 years.

This true story of Schultes' explorations is compelling, and he's a guide we gladly follow. Quietly heroic, Schultes thinks nothing of paddling thousands of miles down uncharted rivers, navigating white-water rapids that bend his boat in half, stepping on poisonous snakes, and contracting near-fatal tropical diseases. All the Indians he encounters accept him with alacrity, and within a few hours he is often half-naked, painted and feathered, ingesting sacred plants, singing and dancing with his new friends until the dawn. Not exactly what one expects from a politically ultra-conservative Harvard academician.

Like lianas in the jungle, ONE RIVER's many stories intertwine: the travels of Schultes' predecessor, Richard Spruce, whose spirit infused his own; the rise and fall of the ancient Inca Empire; Schultes' crucial impact on the development of wild rubber during the rubber crisis of World War II; adventurous field research on coca, the "divine leaf of immortality," by Schultes' students, author Wade Davis and Timothy Plowman; and the historic role Schultes played in launching the psychedelic revolution of the 60's.

As we wade deeper and deeper into the Amazon, magical efflorescences delight us: a legendary Blue Orchid; "river dolphins"; an ancient Inca city shaped like a puma; the Kogi tribe, who believe the sun weaves existence, like a cloth, on the loom of the earth. And in the shadows we confront the atrocities committed against the Indians on the rubber plantations of El Encanto ("the Enchantment").

Rich and vibrant, meticulously researched, ONE RIVER is a brilliant amalgam of natural science, history, anthropology, and one hell of an adventure story.

In the same way the Indians trace their lineage from the original Anaconda, or from the Son of the Sun, Wade Davis traces the ethnobotanical lineage of the teacher he reveres and the irreplaceable friend he has lost -- from Richard Spruce to Richard Evans Schultes to Timothy Plowman. Although, modestly, he fails to acknowledge his own position in the sacred lineage, we know better. Thousands of years ago an Inca ruler created a city embodying a puma. And Wade Davis wrote a book that's an Amazonian rain forest.

One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rainforest
by Wade Davis

This is an excellent book for anyone who's interested in the Amazon, botany, plant drugs, and South American Indians. The book is structured as three interwoven histories. One is an account of 15 months the author spent in Peru and Colombia in the early 70's, assisting botanist Timothy Plowman. Davis and Plowman were studying the distribution and taxonomy of coca. The second (and most extensive) account describes the Oklahoman, Mexican, and Amazonian investigations and explorations of the renowned Harvard botanist Richard Evans Schultes in the 40's and 50's. (Both Davis and Plowman were graduate students of Schultes.) The third account describes the Amazonian explorations of the English botanist Richard Spruce in the 1850's. (Spruce was Schultes's hero and model.) So we have accounts of three generations of Amazonian botanists. Lots of background history is included in the narrative; including accounts of the human devastation wrought by the conquistadors and rubber barons.

Since you will encounter many unfamiliar place names in this book, I recommend reading it in conjunction with GoogleEarth. Although GoogleEarth doesn't currently (as of 2010) show the names of most Amazonian rivers and small settlements, you can use the maps provided in the book to figure out their locations. Once you've found your site, you can label it and add notes. Another benefit of using GoogleEarth is that users have uploaded many photographs that will give you a ground-level view of the rivers and villages the author visited.

When I finished this book, I had a good idea of what Richard Schultes was like, but the author's portrait of Tim Plowman is rather thin. I would have liked to learn more about Plowman's values, his personal relationships, his ideas about conservation, his interpretations of his psychedelic experiences, his hopes and dreams. But we get none of that. Perhaps he never shared these things with the author. Reading the book reminded me that I once saw Tim Plowman give an excellent presentation on his coca research to a group of botanists and students at the University of Michigan in the early 80's. Plowman's early death in 1989 was a great loss.

A highlight of the book for me was Davis' account of the Wairano Indians of Ecuador. This tribe was formerly known as the Auca. Seeing the name Auca for the first time in 50 years, instantly transported me back to my childhood in the late 1950's, when I read with fascination a series of articles in The Detroit News about a group of missionaries who were trying to establish first contact with the Aucas. Five of those missionaries ended up being speared to death. In One River I learned the background of this disastrous encounter and found out for the first time how the Wairano themselves viewed those events.

Another outstanding section of the book describes the circumstances surrounding the discovery of psychedelic mushrooms in the mountains of southern Mexico; a discovery in which Richard Evans Schultes played a role. This is the most detailed and accurate account of these events that I know of. Unfortunately, Davis doesn't explain how it came about that even though Shultes was given three different kinds of mushrooms by an old Indian, he only published the name of one of them. Davis also neglects to mention that the mushroom whose name Schultes published - Panaeolus campanulatus var. sphinctrinus (now called P. papilionaceus) - is not even psychedelically active. (See Paul Stamets, Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World, p. 78.) Perhaps this identification (which was made by Harvard mycologist David Linder on behalf of Schultes) was in error. In any case, the first correct identifications of psychedelic mushrooms were not made until the mid-50's, by the French mycologist Roger Heim.

One weakness of One River is that it concludes with too many loose ends. It needs an epilogue. Although we are told that Tim Plowman died of AIDS in 1989, we learn nothing of his last years. Nor do we learn what happened to their companion dog Pogo (who nearly lost his life swimming across a river to rejoin them). The reader would also like to know how it came about that Fernando Tina, with his vast knowledge of botanical medicines, died of leprosy. Did he reject Western medicine? Were no western botanists willing to pay for his treatments? We'd also like to know how it could be possible that dart poison can produce the same psychedelic effect as DMT-containing ebena snuff (p.475). What did the dart poison consist of? We want to know more.

The author has a tendency to exaggerate for dramatic effect. He tells us the rain-soaked cassock of a priest weighed "40 pounds" (p. 358). We're told that Colombian troops "marched in mud up to their waists" (p. 172). He describes the tepals of the rare orchid, Aganisia cyanea, as a "perfectly pure shade of blue" (p. 373), although they're actually pale lavender (or at least that's how they look in all the online photos I've seen). We're told of broken-down settlements "empty and silent save for the odd cry of a hungry child" (p. 395). We're told that beriberi can only be treated with thiamine in "massive doses injected repeatedly over time" (p. 405), when according to online medical sources, a single injection results in improvement of symptoms within hours. We're told that a series of expeditions to the mountains of Oaxaca in the 1950's in quest of psychedelic mushrooms resulted in "the birth of the psychedelic era" (p. 112). This is hardly the case. After all, Aldous Huxley published The Doors of Perception before Wasson partook of magic mushrooms; and LSD was being used clinically as far back as the late 40's.

The author states that Richard Schultes, in 1938, was the first to find the pyschedelic mushroom, Psilocybe cubensis (p. 151). This is incorrect. Psilocybe cubensis was first collected in Cuba, and was described by the botanist Earle in 1906.

If there is ever a second edition, it would be helpful to include a chronological table to help keep track of who did what, when, and where. It would also be helpful to readers with botanical backgrounds if vernacular names of plants were consistently accompanied by scientific names. The maps would be easier to read if they were larger, with larger print. It would also be helpful if oddly spelled Quechua words (such as quollqa) were accompanied by a rough pronunciation guide. More photos of the expedition would also be desirable (though I know that would add to the price of a book). Finally, the book has a boring cover that is unworthy of its fascinating subject matter.

This is a remarkable book. You'll learn a lot; and it will surely hold your interest. I highly recommend it.

I had the pleasure of taking a rafting trip down the Taku river in British Columbia with Wade Davis, his family, National Geographic, and The River Leage in July 2001. He told some of the stories in this book around the campfire and it was great to learn he feels just as passionately about them in real life as it came across in his books.