One River
Book description
The Amazon river basin contains the world's largest remaining rain forest as well as its longest river. Countless Indian tribes live there, as well as vast numbers of plant species, many of them still unknown to science. This book tells the story of three scientists who explored the region: the…
Why read it?
1 author picked One River as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I've worked in Amazonia enough to know that its peoples and plants are a trove of shared experience and evolution, sacred and intricate in equal measure.
This book is a beautiful and intriguing account of these plant-human ('ethnobotanical') relationships. There is magic, with plants granting insights to those who approach them with respect and correct technique. Medicines, dart-poisons, and hallucinogens tell their stories, and sometimes the plants, like ayahuasca vines, can be heard singing for shamanic attention.
But there is darkness, too. It lies in the cruel history of Europeans in the Amazon and careless modernity destroying what nature and…
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