Menu
Next in the queue
52
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
31/100Critics
35/100Scholars
91/100Author:
Michael Pollan
Publisher:
Penguin Press
Date:
July 6, 2021
A radical challenge to how we think about drugs, and an exploration into the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plantsâand the equally powerful taboos.
What The Reviewers Say
[Pollan] masterfully elevates a series of big questions about drugs, plants and humans that are likely to leave readers thinking in new ways.
While not as revelatory as Pollan’s major works, this is a wonderful and compelling read that will leave you thinking long after you set it down.
Pollan is a gentle, generous writer, so it is to his credit that he realises that an account of how he felt when he stopped drinking coffee for a few months was hardly likely to provide narrative drama. That doesn’t stop him doing it, with predictably tedious consequences, but he constructs a nice chapter all the same out of other bits of information..
Pollan is not particularly interested in recommending that readers scale back on coffee or experiment with opium tea. Instead, he wants readers to unlearn biases about drugs to make space for new cultural conversations about these psychoactive substances.
