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bldinmt's review against another edition
informative
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
I listened to the sections on opium and caffeine as an audiobook (read by the author--which was great!, but then I dilly-dallied too long and my loan from MTLibrary2Go expired before I finished the book. I read the mescaline section in the hardback edition.
readingryan14's review against another edition
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
3.5
harmonictempest's review against another edition
1.0
Disappointing work from a usually-great author.
I've come to expect great writing about food and biochemistry and eating from Michael Pollan. Unfortunately, instead of those things, this book is a combination of political writing and a memoir. And well...he should stick to food and biochemistry.
The first section on poppies has only a few tiny tidbits about poppies, and mostly is a personal polemic against the war on drugs. I wouldn't be against reading a takedown of the war on drugs, but this was a diatribe much more than a reasoned argument.
In the second section of caffeine, I learned a few interesting things about caffeine (the research on bees was pretty interesting, and the timeline of when it came to Europe), but where I would have loved more of that, there were instead broad sweeping generalizations about how caffeine caused the Englightenment and swept away the alcoholic fog of medieval religious thinking, allowing men to see clearly and use science for the first time - and no, that's not a hyperbolic summary. Again, I'm open to a reasoned argument for that but this was storytelling, not journalism.
By the third section on mescaline I was skimming to get to the end, but could tell that again here was much more focus on personal experiences of peyote ceremonies and nuggets about how the government oppressed Native American religion than on the science of psychedelics.
There was a fascinating book here he could have written on the science of mind-altering plants. He just chose to write something else instead, and the book felt like a waste of time as a result.
(Oh, and there was a whiff of money-grubbing here - most of the poppies section came from an article here wrote in the 90s, and most of the caffeine section came from an audiobook he released a few years ago.)
I've come to expect great writing about food and biochemistry and eating from Michael Pollan. Unfortunately, instead of those things, this book is a combination of political writing and a memoir. And well...he should stick to food and biochemistry.
The first section on poppies has only a few tiny tidbits about poppies, and mostly is a personal polemic against the war on drugs. I wouldn't be against reading a takedown of the war on drugs, but this was a diatribe much more than a reasoned argument.
In the second section of caffeine, I learned a few interesting things about caffeine (the research on bees was pretty interesting, and the timeline of when it came to Europe), but where I would have loved more of that, there were instead broad sweeping generalizations about how caffeine caused the Englightenment and swept away the alcoholic fog of medieval religious thinking, allowing men to see clearly and use science for the first time - and no, that's not a hyperbolic summary. Again, I'm open to a reasoned argument for that but this was storytelling, not journalism.
By the third section on mescaline I was skimming to get to the end, but could tell that again here was much more focus on personal experiences of peyote ceremonies and nuggets about how the government oppressed Native American religion than on the science of psychedelics.
There was a fascinating book here he could have written on the science of mind-altering plants. He just chose to write something else instead, and the book felt like a waste of time as a result.
(Oh, and there was a whiff of money-grubbing here - most of the poppies section came from an article here wrote in the 90s, and most of the caffeine section came from an audiobook he released a few years ago.)
hjhannah_4's review against another edition
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.0
He should not have tried to write about Peyote. He doesn't have the right to and at points in the book he seems to understand that but then immediately goes right back to pushing indigenous individuals to tell him about something sacred to them and show him more than he deserves as a non-indigenous colonizer. I wish he'd had the mind to actually pay attention to what was being communicated to him.
josephineacland's review against another edition
5.0
This is my kind of non fiction. Full of historical context, personal experience, and a million other perspectives. No claims of certainty, he remains curious through the entire journey.