Plants of the Gods
6 companion texts
Plants of the Gods is a reference text, not a narrative. Its argument, that psychoactive plants deserve serious pharmacological and ethnographic attention, is made by documentation rather than argument. These readings extend the documentation, verify the pharmacology, and situate Schultes's work in the conservation crisis that has accelerated since his death.
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One River
The best book about Schultes, his student Wade Davis's memoir of their time together in the Amazon and Davis's own fieldwork in Haiti and Colombia. The only sustained portrait of Schultes as a person rather than a scientist.
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The Botany of Desire
Pollan's argument that plants have shaped human evolution through their relationship with desire. The popular complement to Schultes's academic documentation, the same plants, a different analytical frame.
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The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants: Ethnopharmacology and Its Applications
The comprehensive reference for psychoactive plant chemistry beyond what Plants of the Gods covers. 800+ species, full pharmacological data, ethnographic context. The technical extension of Schultes and Hofmann.
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Half-Earth
Wilson's argument for protecting half the Earth's surface for biodiversity, the conservation argument that follows from Schultes's urgency. If you accept Schultes's claim that the pharmacopoeia is disappearing, Wilson's proposal is the response.
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Braiding Sweetgrass
The botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation on the relationship between Western botany and indigenous plant knowledge. The methodological and ethical argument for how to do the kind of work Schultes did, from an indigenous perspective he didn't have.
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The Jaguar That Roams the Mind
A narrative account of Shipibo ayahuasca apprenticeship, what it actually takes to acquire the plant knowledge Schultes documented. The long view on how the knowledge Schultes recorded was generated and transmitted.