The Lost Amazon The Pioneering Expeditions of Richard Evans Schultes

About this book

In 1941, Richard Evan Schultes, often referred to as the "father of ethnobotany", took a leave of absence from Harvard University and disappeared into the Columbian Amazon. Twelve years later he resurfaced having traveled to places no outsider had ever visited, mapped uncharted rivers, and lived among two dozen Amazonian tribes. Simultaneously, he conducted secret research missions for the U.S. government and collected some 30,000 botanical specimens, including 2,000 novel medicinal plants and 300 species new to science. The greatest Amazonian botanical explorer of the 20th century, Schultes was a living link to the naturalists of the Victorian era and a world authority on toxic, medicinal, and hallucinogenic plants. Over the course of his time in the Amazonian basin, Schultes took over 10,000 images of plants, landscapes, and the indigenous peoples with whom he lived.

Originally published in 2004, The Lost Amazon was the first major publication to examine the work of Dr. Schultes as seen through his photographs and field notes. With text by Schultes's protégé and fellow explorer Wade Davis, this impressive document takes armchair travelers where they've never gone before.

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Biography

Richard Evans Schultes (1911-2001) was widely considered the preeminent authority on hallucinogenic and medicinal plants, and is regarded as the "father of ethnobotany." He published ten books and more than 450 scientific articles, and in 1992 he received the gold medal of the Linnean Society of London, which is often equated with the Nobel Prize for botany. Schultes's research into hallucinogenic plants made some of his books cult favorites among drug experimenters in the 1960s. His findings also influenced such cultural icons as Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, William Burroughs, and Carlos Castenada. Wade Davis studied for several years with Richard Evans Schultes while getting his Ph.D. in ethnobotany and is a critically acclaimed, internationally best-selling author and anthropologist, whose many books include The Serpent and the Rainbow, One River, The Wayfinders, and Into the Silence – winner of the 2012 Samuel Johnson Prize, the top award for literary nonfiction in the English language.

Between 1999 and 2013, Wade Davis served as explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society and he is currently a professor of anthropology and the LEEF Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of British Columbia. Chris Murray edited Schultes's remarkable photographs and journals for publication in The Lost Amazon, curated other fine photography books, and founded and directs the Govinda Gallery in Washington D.C., where he lives. An exhibition based on The Lost Amazon, originating at the Govinda Gallery and subsequently touring, is among the more than 200 exhibitions he has organized.

Andrew Weil is a world-renowned leader and pioneer in the field of integrative medicine. Dr. Weil is the founder and director of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center, where he is also a clinical professor of medicine, professor of public health, and the Lovell-Jones Professor of Integrative Rheumatology. Dr. Weil received both his medical degree and his undergraduate A.B. degree in biology (botany) from Harvard University. Approximately ten million copies of Dr. Weil's books have been sold worldwide. He lives in Tucson, AZ.