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Wade Davis

One River: Explorations And Discoveries In The Amazon Rain Forest Hardcover – September 3, 1996

by Wade Davis (Author)

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Recounts the author's education under Richard Evans Schultes, who studied the drug qualities of plants in the Amazon basin, his own journey in his teacher's footsteps, and his witness to the destruction of the rain forest. 25,000 first printing. Tour.

Print length

544 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Simon & Schuster
Publication date

September 3, 1996
Dimensions

6.75 x 1.5 x 9.75 inches
ISBN-10

0684808862
ISBN-13

978-0684808864
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Richard Evans Schultes was arguably this century's foremost botanist and the father of ethnobotany--the study of plants and medicinal knowledge of indigenous peoples. He inadvertently inspired the 1960s drug culture with the publication of his scholarly journals on hallucinogenic plants. A meticulous scientist, his research on Columbia's rubber-producing hevea trees led to America's mass-production of rubber during World War II, which ultimately contributed to victory. Davis, one of Schultes's most devoted students, recounts the great botanist's life--from his research along hundreds of miles of forested rivers and his jungle treks while shattered by malaria to his intuitive gift with Amazon shamans and his relationship with such cult figures as Timothy Leary and William Burroughs.

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.

From Library Journal

While not technically a biography, this is the story of Timothy Plowman, a young ethnobotanist who died while looking for medicinal plants in the South American rain forests. The author, who explored with Plowman in 1974 and 1975, tells a vivid story of adventure, Amerindian culture, and, to a lesser extent, the social and political climate surrounding Harvard in the 1960s and 1970s. Plowman was the brilliant protege of Richard Evans Schultes, one of the world's leading authorities on hallucinogenic plants and the Amazon rain forest. The author mixes the backgrounds and travels of the two men with sociology of South American tribes and their sacred plants. Because use of hallucinogenic plants is described, this is not a book for young people. For adults, it's a fascinating story of ethnobotanical exploration and an excellent real-life tale of science out of the laboratory, and only peripherally the sad story of a brilliant life lost to AIDS (Plowman contracted the disease as a result of pretrip inoculations). It also reveals the effects of development on the dwindling rain forests and their endangered cultures. Recommended for large collections.?Laura E. Lipton, Center for Urban Horticulture, Seattle
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Davis, a compelling writer and intrepid ethnobotanist best known for The Serpent and the Rainbow (1987), proves himself a master of synthesis in this engrossing history of plant exploration in the Amazon. He alternates between accounts of his amazing adventures in the field and rich descriptions of remote Indian tribes and their plant-based cosmologies, tales of conquering Spaniards and missionaries, and dynamic portraits of his mentors: the pioneering genius Richard Evans Schultes, the "world's leading authority on hallucinogenic plants," and Timothy Plowman, another inspired plant expert and fearless traveler. Davis pays particular attention to Schultes' groundbreaking field research into the uses of such sacred plants as peyote, coca, yage, and the San Isidro mushroom, as well as his seminal work with rubber plants and arrow and dart poisons. But as he works back and forth in time, a terrible paradox arises: just as outsiders such as Schultes and Plowman began to recognize the tremendous sophistication of Indian knowledge about the medicinal and spiritual properties of plants, the Amazon jungle came under assault. Davis, acute and articulate, both marvels at the subtleties of nature and the inventiveness of human beings and bemoans the tragedy of cultural conquest and rampant industrialization. Donna Seaman

From Kirkus Reviews

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 (The Serpent and the Rainbow, 1986). Beginning in the middle 1930s and for the greater part of the next two decades, Schultes journeyed throughout the remote Amazonian jungle to study the psychoactive and medicinal plants used by its indigenous peoples. His discoveries--including the natural plant source for LSD--have filled the annals of ethnobotany and helped kick off the hallucinogenic era of the 1960s. Schultes survived beriberi, malaria, frequent capsizings, and airplane accidents. But perhaps his most adventurous and sometimes dangerous forays were into the psychoactive drug rituals of tribes located deep within the Colombian and Brazilian rainforests. Schultes was recruited by the US government in the late '30s to find and develop new, blight-resistant sources of rubber, a project that was foolishly abandoned, according to Davis, because of bureaucratic infighting and ineptitude. Faintly echoing Schultes's saga is Davis's account of his own 1970s expedition, when he accompanied the ethnobotanist Tim Plowman to the Andean regions of Peru and Colombia to collect specimans of coca and study its cultivation patterns; in the footsteps of their mentor, Schultes, both men sample the hallucinogenic effects of various potions, chew coca leaves, and find themselves in some dicey situations on mountain roads. These episodes are flavored with revealing histories of the brutal Spanish conquest and the more recent but equally gruesome enslavement of Indians to the rubber trade, and contain some sprightly written, at times dryly ironic travel prose. But Davis's own experiences pale by comparison with the main narrative and are interjected at seemingly random intervals. Although Davis might have been better advised to scale down, this is an exceptional tale of 20th-century scientific exploration and a rousing travelogue to places both real and illusory. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review

In 1941 Richard Schultes took a leave from Harvard University and disappeared into the Amazon basin to spend twelve years living among Indian tribes and exploring the region. He eventually emerged as a world authority on medicinal plants. Twenty years later his students followed in his footsteps: this is one student's account of his Amazon explorations and discoveries, providing first-hand accounts for armchair travellers and naturalist readers alike. -- Midwest Book Review

Mr. Schultes can add to his formidable list of achievements that he taught and guided generations of dedicated ethnobotanists. One of his acolytes has now amply repaid him by writing this great, lyrical book in his honor. -- The New York Times Book Review, John Hemming

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Simon & Schuster; 1st edition (September 3, 1996)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 544 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0684808862
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0684808864
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.9 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.75 x 1.5 x 9.75 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #573,130 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #5 in Tropical Ecosystems
- #1,176 in Ecology (Books)

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Wade Davis
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Wade Davis is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker whose work has taken him from the Amazon to Tibet, Africa to Australia, Polynesia to the Arctic. Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society from 2000 to 2013, he is currently Professor of Anthropology and the BC Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of British Columbia. Author of 22 books, including One River, The Wayfinders and Into the Silence, winner of the 2012 Samuel Johnson prize, the top nonfiction prize in the English language, he holds degrees in anthropology and biology and received his Ph.D. in ethnobotany, all from Harvard University. His many film credits include Light at the Edge of the World, an eight-hour documentary series written and produced for the NGS. Davis, one of 20 Honorary Members of the Explorers Club, is the recipient of 12 honorary degrees, as well as the 2009 Gold Medal from the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, the 2011 Explorers Medal, the 2012 David Fairchild Medal for botanical exploration, the 2015 Centennial Medal of Harvard University, the 2017 Roy Chapman Andrews Society’s Distinguished Explorer Award, the 2017 Sir Christopher Ondaatje Medal for Exploration, and the 2018 Mungo Park Medal from the Royal Scottish Geographical Society. In 2016, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada. In 2018 he became an Honorary Citizen of Colombia.
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Wade Davis
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Wade Davis (born December 14, 1953) CM is a Canadian anthropologist, ethnobotanist, author, and photographer whose work has focused on worldwide indigenous cultures, especially in North and South America and particularly involving the traditional uses and beliefs associated with psychoactive plants. Davis came to prominence with his 1985 best-selling book The Serpent and the Rainbow about the zombies of Haiti. Davis is Professor of Anthropology and the BC Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of British Columbia.
Davis has published popular articles in Outside, National Geographic, Fortune, and Condé Nast Traveler.
Davis is an Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society. Named by the NGS as one of the Explorers for the Millennium, he has been described as “a rare combination of scientist, scholar, poet and passionate defender of all of life’s diversity.” In recent years his work has taken him to East Africa, Borneo, Nepal, Peru, Polynesia, Tibet, Mali, Benin, Togo, New Guinea, Australia, Colombia, Vanuatu, Mongolia, and the high Arctic of Nunuvut and Greenland.
Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by [Cpt. Muji] (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.
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mixer

A different kind of Amazon...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 31, 2021

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Long before it became trending to shamin-tour, Wade Davis was investigating cultural anthropology and ethnobotany. I was familiar with 'Serpent and the Rainbow' and thought it was an interesting hypothesis and an entertaining read. When I read 'One River' in '96 when first released, it had a profound effect. Particularly for drawing attention to the resources in the Amazon and rich potential there being squandered.

It's not a heavy scholastic treatise, though he does show his technical hand from time to time. It is presented as a parallel adventure story with a healthy openness to the unknown. I think the most refreshing aspect is how Mr. Wade doesn’t approach his investigation with dogmatic superiority, but by suspending preconception to allow for the possibility there may be knowledge that might not be defined so easily with chemical analysis, diagrams, and .

Mr Davis has been criticized in academic circles, a bit unfairly in my opinion, partially due to his Harvard pedigree, not following stricter disciplines and, I suspect, partly for being populist. It precisely because he makes it accessible, and the subjects he approaches tend to have esoteric overtones that push conventions, that drew me the book in the first place. It, along with The Power Broker by Robert Caro (a different kind of jungle adventure), have become my go-to book gifts to close friends over the years. I highly recommend it.

On a side note; while very good in its own right, (the 'other') Amazon's film Embrace the Serpent owes more than a passing nod to 'One River' imo.

4 people found this helpful

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Reader

An amazing book

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 1, 2020

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This book is simply amazing.
That’s my short summary.
Here’s a longer summary:
This book is a travelogue of Wade Davis’s experiences in Columbia and surrounding regions, employed together with Tim Plowman to continue the ethnobotanical explorations begun by Professor Richard Evans Schultes of Harvard University. That’s the basic premise, but reading the book is an emotionally rich experience that reaches far, far beyond that. I am left with a sense of what is was like to explore the jungles of South America in the 1940’s on the remarkably exotic mission of discovering and categorizing new plants, many of them with hallucinogenic properties that are relevant to the modern resurgence of this topic in academic research. Davis, an accomplished anthropologist, is also a gifted writer. Through his writing I have traveled back in time and witnessed the horrific cruelty of the Spanish invasion in these regions, witnessed the landscape in all of its beauty and incessant sogginess, and come to know some of its people and how they have molded their lives to cope with the hardship and ultimately to transcend that hardship through their relationship with the biodiversity that surrounds them.
This book is an epic journey. As someone who plows through 50 books a year on average, I put this as one of my five all-time favorites. It was that good. On a five star scale, I give it six.

18 people found this helpful

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Stephen Balbach

Four stars

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 9, 2008

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'One River' is full of great stories and anecdotes as well as a sense of place and time that are unforgettable. I'm giving it four stars for reasons stated below and so won't focus on the positives which have already been so well covered by many reviewers. These are fairly minor quibbles in an otherwise good book.

Stylistically, the narrative doesn't always flow well. Wade presents the life of the books central character, Richard Schultes, in some sort of chronological order, but interjects anecdotal stories out of order requiring the reader to have a good memory to keep everything straight. This is a long detail-rich book with 1000s of people and place names covering about a 150 year timespan from the Amazon Jungle, to the Andes to Central America and the American West.

The amount of detail is at times excessive, in particular with place names and locations, Wade sometimes spends as much time describing where a place is (a 50 person village in the jungle) as he does about the place itself before moving on to the next place - it feels like a rote travel log at times, probably because he used Schultes private botany journals as one source. There is so much detail it sometimes crowds out the big picture, lost in the trees. I think the book could have been edited back 100 pages or so, there is just a lot of material that is pure anecdote or trivia.

Finally and probably most importantly, as a life of Richard Schultes, this is pure hagiography. He is the hero of the story in all respects. Perhaps hagiography is helpful in motivating students to become scientists, but it is not a balanced objective biography, it is a tribute by one of his admiring students, Wade plays up Schultes accomplishments but does not question or examine his failures. For example, Schultes spent the majority of his career in the Amazon studying the rubber tree and became the world expert, yet he never did complete a book about it, what a tragic loss. I don't mean to disparage Schultes, but given his stature and reputation, the lack of any criticism naturally draws the question Wade never asks. The book was written in 1996 and Shultes died in 2001 so with time we may see a more balanced perspective.

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Top reviews from other countries

adam lynch

Shocked by poor quality & lamentable condition

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 21, 2021

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I cannot read this book. It is in a lamentable state, as if the printers cutting machine was offset & many pages are stuck together which means I run the risk of damaging book if I try to separate them.

One person found this helpful

Richard Nicklin

Fantastic

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 9, 2018

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Beautiful language coupled with the author’s living passion for the subject effectively transport the reader to the Amazon, and into the minds of fascinated botanists. Brilliantly written.

One person found this helpful

clifford ohanlon

An excellent and enlightening read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 28, 2013

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This is a book I really enjoyed, once started I did not want to put it down, however it is a book that I found I could easily return to, have already purchased another copy for friends of mine for their son after they read my copy. Fantastic information of many tribes in the Amazon Basin and their use of hullocogenics.

One person found this helpful

Andrew Hurst

Thoroughly enjoyed reading this book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 12, 2017

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Wow what a journey, truly epic. Thoroughly enjoyed reading this book!

M. A. Burke

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 23, 2018

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