One River (Paperback)

~ (Author) "WHEN I FIRST lived in Columbia, I used to stay from time to time on a farm just outside the city of Medellin..." (more)
Key Phrases: rigidi folia, rubber effort, rubber program, South America, United States, Sao Gabriel (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Best known for The Serpent and the Rainbow, Wade Davis is an ethnobotanist interested in the native uses of plants, especially psychotropics. He finds many such plants in the travels he recounts in One River, especially coca and curare. (The first, famously, is a curse in the First World but is a necessity in the Andes, where it promotes the digestion of many kinds of food plants.) Framing Davis's narrative is an account of the dangerous World War II-era Amazonian expeditions undertaken by his mentor, Harvard biologist Richard Evans Schultes. Davis describes a few hair-raising encounters of his own, making this a fine book of scientific adventure.

From Publishers Weekly

The prodigious biological and cultural riches of the vast Amazon rain forest are being lost at a horrendous rate, according to the author, often without yielding their secrets to the Western world. During his years in the South American jungle, ethnobotanist Davis (The Serpent and the Rainbow) has done much to preserve some of these treasures. He tells two entwined tales here?his own explorations in the '70s and those of his mentor, the great Harvard ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes, beginning in the '30s. Both men have been particularly interested in the psychoactive and medicinal properties of the plants of the Amazon basin and approach their subject with a reverence for the cultural context in which the plants are used. The contrasting experiences of two explorers, a mere generation apart, starkly demonstrates how much has already been destroyed in the rain forest. Although Schultes probably knew more about Amazonian plants than any Western scientist, he was constantly learning of new ones and new uses for them from native experts. Davis graphically describes the brutal clash of cultures from Columbian times to the present, often so devastating for indigenous peoples, that has defined this region. At times humorous, at times depressing, this is a consistently enlightening and thought-provoking study. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (August 5, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684834960
• ISBN-13: 978-0684834962
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #60,312 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Human & Ecological Diversity Fall Victim to the Modern World, March 17, 2001

By	Jim Breitinger (Salt Lake City) - See all my reviews

"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.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Depswa disclosed, November 6, 2002

By	Stephen A. Haines (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars River of Life, May 22, 2003

By	JOHN J. MCGRAW "author of Brain & Belief" (Solana Beach, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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 itself to 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.