Monday, April 2, 2012

April Book Review - One River by: Wade Davis

This month I have chosen One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest, by Canadian author Wade Davis.  This book was published in 1996 by Touchstone.

Mr. Davis is an anthropologist and ethnobotanist graduating from Harvard and currently an Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society. He also is an amazing explorer, researcher, photographer and author of many books and articles. He has received numerous awards and in 2009 was the selected speaker for the Massey Lectures for The Wayfinders.
You should check out Wade Davis's website www.daviswade.com/ to see some of his amazing photos and discoveries for yourself.

In this book Dr.Davis not only tells the amazing tale of his travels into the Amazon to "unveil the botanical secrets of coca, a sacred plant known to the Inca as the Divine Leaf of Immortality", but about Tim Plowman, with whom he traveled with.  Wade Davis and Tim Plowman were both students of Richard Evans Schultes, who made this expedition many years earlier and whose footsteps they were trying to retrace on this journey.  The book then, also gives information regarding Dr. Schultes original journey in the 1950's, in which he was sent to look for new sources of wild rubber, and made many other botanical and cultural discoveries.
I love books like this that weave discovery, amazing adventure, cultural education and history all together.  Books that bring us back to the earth and why we need to protect it because of how magical it truly is.

Hope you enjoy One River if you get a chance to read it.

Namaste.
Pamela Nelson
www.plnyoga.vpweb.com



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