paper forest
April 23, 2008I leave for Manaus on Saturday. I’m not an expert on Brazil or the Amazon. I’ve never been south of the Equator (this trip will just tip me over the edge). And I hope to bring something meaningful back for the BBC and for my home show, PRI’s The World. So I’m already indebted to a number of books or, more precisely, their authors. Here’s some of what I’ve been trekking through.
The Last Forest: The Amazon in the Age of Globalization, by Mark London and Brian Kelly
Tree of Rivers: The Story of the Amazon, by John Hemming
Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilisation, by Lester R. Brown
The Amazon (Bradt guide, 3rd edition), by Roger Harris and Peter Hutchinson
All of your preparations for the Amazon have reminded me of a book I read for an ethnobotany class in undergrad entitled One River. It’s a bit of a scientific adventure memoir written by Harvard ethnobotanist Wade Davis about his experiences in the Amazon, within the historical frame of the exploits of his mentor Richard Evans Schultes. The main stories revolve around rubber and native uses of psychotropic plants–absolutely fascinating. It certainly makes you see coca in a whole new light!