Works by
Wade Davis, Ph.D.
(Anthropologist, Ethnobotanist, Writer)
[December 14, 1953 - ]

Books

• Grand Canyon: A River at Risk by Wade Davis with Chris Rainier, Photographer (2008)
  It’s an alarming if little-known fact: one of the world’s mightiest rivers, the Colorado, no longer reaches the sea. Every drop of its water is allocated to agriculture and communities along the way and none remains for the Colorado Delta at river’s end, a once-thriving estuary that supported North America’s most diverse biosphere. Grand Canyon: A River at Risk draws attention the river’s plight as well as to the larger issue of the looming global water crisis. It follows Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a leading advocate for water conservation and river restoration, eminent ethnobotanist Wade Davis, and their two daughters on a rafting adventure down the Colorado. Their compelling journey illuminates both the challenges and the many opportunities that exist for conserving and restoring the world’s watersheds. Combining science and adventure with glorious imagery and locations, the book delivers a message of hope and inspiration for all people of the world.

• The Lost Amazon: The Photographic Journey of Richard Evans Schultes (2004)
  Richard Evans Schultes (1915-2001) was probably the greatest explorer of the Amazon, and regarded among anthropologists and seekers alike as the "father of ethnobotany." Taking what was meant to be a short leave from Harvard in 1941, he surveyed the Amazon basin almost continuously for twelve years, during which time he lived among two dozen different Indian tribes, mapped rivers, secretly sought sources of rubber for the US government during WWII, and collected and classified 30,000 botanical specimens, including 2,000 new medicinal plants. Schultes chronicled his stay there in hundreds of remarkable photographs of the tribes and the land, evocative of the great documentary photographers such as Edward Sheriff Curtis. Published to coincide with a traveling exhibition to debut at the Govinda Gallery in Washington, D.C., The Lost Amazon is the first major publication to examine the work of Dr. Schultes, as seen through his photographs and field notes. With text by Schultes's protege and fellow explorer, Wade Davis, this impressive document takes armchair travelers where they've never gone before.

• Light at the Edge of the World: A Journey Through the Realm of Vanishing Cultures (2002, 2007)
  For renowned anthropologist and ethnobotanist Wade Davis, the term “ethnosphere” encompasses the wealth of human diversity and all that traditional cultures have to teach about different ways of living and thinking.
  
  In Light at the Edge of the World, Davis — best known for The Serpent and the Rainbow — presents an intimate survey of the ethnosphere in 80 striking photographs taken over the course of his wide exploration. In eloquent accompanying text, Davis takes readers deep into worlds few Westerners will ever experience, worlds that are fading away even as he writes. From the Canadian Arctic and the rain forests of Borneo to the Amazon and the towering mountains of Tibet, readers are awakened to the rituals, beliefs, and lives of the Waorani, the Penan, the Inuit, and many other unique and endangered traditional cultures. The result is a haunting and enlightening realization of the limitless potential of the human imagination of life.
  
  While globalization has become the battle cry of the 21st century, Davis’s magisterial work points out that the erosion of the ethnosphere will diminish us all. “The human imagination is vast, fluid, infinite in its capacity for social and spiritual invention,” he writes, and reminds us that “there are other means of interpreting our existence, other ways of being.”

• The Light at the Edge of the World: Lecture (2001)

• The Clouded Leopard: A Book of Travels (1999, 2007)
  For many years and through many of the world's most remote regions, Wade Davis has traveled in search of the rare places where cultural diversity survives, untainted by the influences of globalization and modernization. The Clouded Leopard brings together the extraordinary travels that sprang from this quest. His travels emphasize the fragility of the planet yet also illuminate the places and people where the bond between landscape and spirit is preserved. Beautiful and disturbing, tragic and yet hopeful, his work sends out a timely message that cannot be ignored.

• Rainforest: Ancient Realm of the Pacific Northwest (1998) by Graham Osborne with Wade Davis

• Shadows in the Sun: Travels To Landscapes Of Spirit And Desire (1998)
  "One of the intense pleasures of travel is the opportunity to live among people who have not forgotten the old ways, who still feel their past in the wind, touch it in stones polished by rain, recognize its taste in the bitter leaves of plants."
  
  In this riveting collection of stories and essays, gifted scientist, anthropologist, and writer Wade Davis offers a captivating look at indigenous cultures around the world--from the nomadic Penan of Malaysia to the Vodoun practitioners of Haiti--and a poetic, timely examination of the rapport between humans and the natural world. Traveling from the mountains of Tibet to the jungles of the Amazon, Davis delves into the mysteries of shamanic healing, experiences first-hand hallucinogenic plants, explores the vanishing Borneo rain forests, and describes the ingenuity of the Inuit as they hunt narwhale on the Arctic ice.
  
  A compelling and utterly unique celebration of the beauty and diversity of our planet, Shadows in the Sun is about landscape and character, the wisdom of lives drawn directly from the land, and the hunger of those who seek to rediscover such understanding. Davis shows that preserving the diversity of the world's cultures and spiritual beliefs is as important as preserving endangered plants and animals--and vital to our understanding of who we are.

• One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest (1996)
  "Best known for The Serpent and the Rainbow, Wade Davis is an ethnobotanist interested in the native uses of plants, especially psychotropics. He finds many such plants in the travels he recounts in One River, especially coca and curare. (The first, famously, is a curse in the First World but is a necessity in the Andes, where it promotes the digestion of many kinds of food plants.) Framing Davis's narrative is an account of the dangerous World War II-era Amazonian expeditions undertaken by his mentor, Harvard biologist Richard Evans Schultes. Davis describes a few hair-raising encounters of his own, making this a fine book of scientific adventure." -- Amazon.com

• Nomads of the Dawn (1995) by
  Ian MacKenzie, Shane Kennedy, and Wade Davis

• Shadows in the Sun: Essays on the Spirit of Place (1992)

• The Art of Shamanic Healing (1991)

• Penan Voice for the Borneo Rain Forest (1990) by Thom Henley and Wade Davis

• Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie (1988)
  In 1982, Harvard-trained ethnobotanist Wade Davis traveled into the Haitian countryside to research reports of zombies—the infamous living dead of Haitian folklore. A report by a team of physicians of a verifiable case of zombification led him to try to obtain the poison associated with the process and examine it for potential medical use.
  
  Interdisciplinary in nature, this study reveals a network of power relations reaching all levels of Haitian political life. It sheds light on recent Haitian political history, including the meteoric rise under Duvalier of the Tonton Macoute. By explaining zombification as a rational process within the context of traditional Vodoun society, Davis demystifies one of the most exploited of folk beliefs, one that has been used to denigrate an entire people and their religion.

• The Serpent and the Rainbow: A Harvard Scientist's Astonishing Journey into the Secret Societies of Haitian Voodoo, Zombis, and Magic (1986, 1997)
  In April 1982, ethnobotanist Wade Davis arrived in Haiti to investigate two documented cases of zombis -- people who had reappeared in Haitian society years after they had been officially declared dead and had been buried. Drawn into a netherworld of rituals and celebrations, Davis penetrated the vodoun mystique deeply enough to place zombification in its proper context within vodoun culture. In the course of his investigation, Davis came to realize that the story of vodoun is the history of Haiti -- from the African origins of its people to the successful Haitian independence movement, down to the present day, where vodoun culture is, in effect, the government of Haiti's countryside.
  
  The Serpent and the Rainbow combines anthropological investigation with a remarkable personal adventure to illuminate and finally explain a phenomenon that has long fascinated Americans.
  Movie (1988): Wes Craven, director with Bill Pullman and Cathy Tyson  DVD  VHS

• One River Explorations & Discoveries (1980)

Other

• The Spirit of the Mask (1992)
  Documentary:  Peter von Puttkamer, director with Robert Joseph and Wade Davis  VHS
  An exploration of the sacred role of masks in European and Native American cultures.

See also:

• Visionary Plant Consciousness: The Shamanic Teachings of the Plant World (2007), J. P. Harpignies, ed.
  23 leading experts reveal the ways that psychoactive plants allow nature’s “voice” to speak to humans and what this communication means for our future
   

  • Presents the specific “human-plant interconnection” revealed by visionary plants

  • Explores the relevance of plant-induced visions and shamanic teachings to humanity’s environmental crisis

  • With contributions from Alex Grey, Andrew Weil, Charles S. Grob, Dale Pendell, Dennis McKenna, Edison Saraiva, M.D., Ethan Nadelmann, Ph.D., Florencio Siquera de Caralho, Francis Huxley, Jeffrey Bronfman, Jeremy Narby, John Mohawk, Kat Harrison, Katsi Cook, Luis Eduardo Luna, Ph.D., Marcellus Bear Heart Williams, Michael Pollan, Michael Stewartt, Paul Stamets, Terence McKenna, and Wade Davis.

  Visionary plants have long served indigenous peoples and their shamans as enhancers of perception, thinking, and healing. These plants can also be important guides to the reality of the natural world and how we can live harmoniously in it.
  
  In Visionary Plant Consciousness, editor J. P. Harpignies has gathered presentations from the Bioneers annual conference of environmental and social visionaries that explore how plant consciousness affects the human condition. Twenty-three leading ethnobotanists, anthropologists, medical researchers, and cultural and religious figures present their understandings of the nature of psychoactive plants and their significant connection to humans. What they reveal is that these plants may help us access the profound intelligence in nature--the “mind of nature”--that we must learn to understand in order to survive our ecologically destructive way of life.

• What Is a Shaman? Was ist ein Schamane? Shamans, Healers, and Medicine Men From a Western Point of View (Journal for Ethnomedicine, Special Volume 13/1999), Amelie Schenk  and Christian Rätsch, eds.
  English and German.  Includes works by Ake Hultkrantz, Amelie Schenk, Amy Smith, Armand J. Labbe, Christian Rätsch, Stanley Krippner, Wade Davis, and Willard Johnson