Where the Gods Reign: Plants and Peoples of the Colombian Amazon

I ordered this after reading Wade Davis's amazing book -the Lost Amazon-; about the same area. Dr Schultes is a world renowned Harvard Botanist who traveled widely in the Amazon searching for new medicinal plants - he spent 12 years living and working among the native people. He captured the pathos and soul of the people that lived there with his wonderful black and white images. This book is a tribute not only to this epic journey but to the author as well.Dr Schultes became a legand amoung the local tribes . A man of the outside world yet his repectful and scholarly approach won the native's repect, admiraton and even affection.Even though I'm not a botanist or anthropologist I found the adventure well worth the price of admission.

I originally found this book in the back of a new-age bookstore in a pile of generic "shamanist" books. To say this was a gross miscategorization would be an understatement; what is contained within these pages is not various recepies for getting high, but a massive and thoughtful photographic documentation of the ways in which the indigenous peoples of the Colombian Amazon interact with and become an integral part of their surrounding environment.A must for anyone even remotely interested in botany and/or anthropology!

I just bought this book and had no idea it was a black and white picture book with minimal captions. Most of the pictures of natives , streams, rocks, huts, etc. were'nt even taken by Schultes. I thought I was buying Richard Schultes findings about "plants and peoples of the Columbian Amazon" as the cover states. huge disappointment