One River - Hardcover

Wade Davis

4.46 out of 5 stars

2,494 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684817004 ISBN 13: 9780684817002

Publisher: Simon & Schuster (Trade Division), 1997

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The story of three scientists - Richard Evans Schultes, Tim Plowman and Wade Davis - who, over the course of several decades, explored the Amazon river basin, studying what the Indians knew and trying to learn some of the secrets of the rainforest before they disappeared.

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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.

About the Author

An Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society, Wade Davis holds degrees in anthropology and biology and received his Ph.D. in ethnobotany, all from Harvard University. Davis is the author of 15 books including The Serpent and the Rainbow, One River, and The Wayfinders. His many film credits include Light at the Edge of the World, an eight-hour documentary series produced for the National Geographic Channel. In 2009 he received the Gold Medal from the Royal Canadian Geographical Society for his contributions to anthropology and conservation, and he is the 2011 recipient of the Explorers Medal, the highest award of the Explorers' Club, and the 2012 David Fairchild Medal for Plant Exploration, the most prestigious prize for botanical exploration.

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