BACK COVER #
in 1941, Professor Richard Evans Schultes took a leave from Harvard and disappeared into the Amazon, where he spent the next twelve years mapping uncharted rivers and living among dozens of Indian tribes. In the 1970s, he sent two prize students, Tim Plowman and Wade Davis, to follow in his footsteps and unveil the botanical secrets of coca, the notorious source of cocaine, a sacred plant known to the Inca as the Divine Leaf of Immortality.A stunning account of adventure and discovery, betrayal and destruction, One River is a story of two generations of explorers drawn together by the transcendent knowledge of Indian peoples, the visionary realms of the shaman, and the extraordinary plants that sustain all life in a forest that once stood immense and inviolable.
BLURBS #
"Amazing . . . within the literary jungle as within the botanical one, bright flowers, intricately shaped leaves, towering old trees all appear to the traveler who is willing to make the journey."-- Will St. John, Chicago Tribune
"An epic story . . . a brilliant undertaking, meticulously researched and breathtakingly rich in description and detail."
-- The Toronto Globe and Mail
"Beautifully and meticulously written, One River captures as no other book the adventure of ethnobotany."
-- Edward O. Wilson, author of Naturalist
"Further evidence that the rainforests of the world hold something of vital importance to mankind. . . . Read this book."
-- Sting