12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fascinating and pertinent MUST-read for all adults, July 10, 1998
By A Customer
"Everything you wanted to know about entering the Brazilian Rainforest, and more" could be the subtitle of this unusual but riveting nonfiction work Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice by an ethnobotanist, Mark Plotkin.
Remember those naming games you played on summer nights? "If you were on a desert island, but could have one book with you, what would it be?" When I go up the Amazon, I'll be carrying this little tome under my arm.
Before then, I will enjoy the adventure story and recommend it to others; use the bibliography for further research on the history of the rainforest; make lists of the flora, especially medicinal remedies, mentioned; trace along a map the various routes Plotkin took on his travels through Brazil, Surinam, and along the borders of Colombia and Venezuela. I could teach a year-long course based on the information in this book. What an English course that would be with all the links to ecology, botany, language studies, sociology, anthropology, survival training, medicine--the list goes on.
Am I enthusiastic about Plotkin's work? It is the best book I have read in years even though, teaching literature, I read many fine books. It has affected me the way some people are converted by religion. If you have ever held a thoughtful concern for the rainforest or indigenous peoples or our earth or oxygen, it will affect you, too.
Using a scholarly approach to his highly readable story makes this accessible to professional botanists or historians as well as to us lay people. The photographs each speak their thousand words and are worth the price of the book in themselves. What Rachel Carson did for the dangers of environmental pollution, Mark Plotkin does for the destruction of the fragile rainforest.
Another game you played on summer nights--asking impossible questions like "If a tree fell in a forest, but no one were there to hear it, would it create a sound?" Plotkins makes indelibly clear the effect the fallen trees of the rainfore! sts have on us all.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent 20 minute chapters read by the author, October 18, 2009
The audio version of this book is a double edged sword, on the one hand it is fabulous to hear the author read his book, on the other it's a bit of a pain to convert to something that can be used in the classroom or played on most normal CD players.
This is an incredible book. There are wonderful reviews of this book, and I'd encourage you to read about the content here,
Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice: An Ethnobotanist Searches for New Medicines in the Amazon Rain Forest.
As a companion to the book, I was interested in this audio book. Mark Plotkin reads a slightly abridged version of the book. Mr. Plotkin is not a professional voice, he does a decent job reading his own work. At times his voice sounds a bit strained trying to add some emotion. He also has a bit of trouble maintaining his breath and pace during longer passages. But, his voice is pleasant, and he articulates each word very clearly.
The down side to this CD, it is a CD with 8 MP3 files. If you have an MP3 capable CD player, wonderful, this disc will work perfectly. However, if you only have a normal CD player, these files will have to be converted. Fortunately iTunes can do this fairly easily. Other audio programs can do the same thing.
The step by step instruction:
If you only have one CD/DVD drive, you will have to temporarily copy the MP3 files to your computer. Insert the MP3 CD, copy the 8 MP3 files (ignore everything else on the disc) titled 01 through 08.MP3 to your desktop.
If you are lucky and have two CD/DVD drives, simply insert the MP3 CD into one of your two drives.
Now open iTunes. In the file menu, choose 'import files'. Once that menu is open, click on browse and either go to your desktop for the copied files (01 through 08.MP3); or browse your computer to find the CD drive and highlight the MP3 files (10 through 08). Click on OK.
iTunes will now add 8 song files to your library.
Now you need to create a playlist (Audio CD's can only be burned from a playlist). Go up to the File menu and select, create a new playlist. Rename that playlist to something familiar like Shaman.
Now highlight your 8 new songs from the CD (you can use 'date added' to float those 8 files to the top of your music library) and drag them over to the newly created playlist.
Now you are ready to burn 3 Audio CD's. Click on the new playlist - only 8 songs should be visible. Highlight all 8 files. Click on Burn in the lower right hand corner of the iTunes screen. If you have two CD/DVD drives, select the one not containing the MP3 CD. iTunes will be a little confused for a second and ask if it's OK to burn these Audio CD's on more than one CD. Simply click on Yes and the software will prompt for each consecutive blank CD.
To clean up your iTunes library, assuming you don't want this book cluttering up your library (although you could listen to these on an iPod just as easily); highlight the 8 tracks in iTunes and press the delete key. Go to your desktop and highlight the 8 MP3 files there and delete them. All traces of this MP3 craziness is now gone from your computer.
The entire program requires 3 audio CD's. Three parts will fit on one CD.
Enjoy this fabulous book. The audio version is a great companion. You have to be a bit tech savvy to get these files moved over to an audio CD for listening. But it's not that hard in the end (free tools will work just fine).
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