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In the rain forest in 1952, Professor Schultes takes a tobacco snuff. From Wade Davis's One River.
In the rain forest in 1952, Professor Schultes takes a tobacco snuff. From Wade Davis's One River.
Off the Shelf

Uproar at Dancing Rabbit Creek, by Colin Crawford, J.D. '88 (Addison-Wesley, $23). An account of a fight over a proposed hazardous waste site in Noxubee County, Mississippi-whose residents are mostly poor, undereducated, black, and politically powerless-and a lesson in how the racial and economic isolation of Americans from one another can have alarming consequences. Crawford, an environmental lawyer from New York City, reports on how poor whites and blacks came together to invite the dump into their backyards, not for practical economic reasons, although cash and promises of jobs were offered, but to wrest power from the landed white elite (two of whose members had organized a movement to stop the dump), thus settling old scores.

Finding God at Harvard: Spiritual Journeys of Thinking Christians, edited by Kelly Monroe, member of the United Ministry at Harvard and Radcliffe (Zondervan, $17.99). Monroe believes that at Harvard and on campuses across the country, students are haunted by an emptiness that only Truth can fill, and Truth ultimately is the province of God. But can Christian faith survive a rigorous intellectual atmosphere? Forty-two faculty members, former students, and religious leaders here answer, "Yes."

The Real Freshman Handbook: An Irreverent & Totally Honest Guide to Life on Campus, by Jennifer Hanson '97 and friends (Houghton Mifflin, $9.95, paper). Truth according to a current undergraduate.

Getting Over Homer, by Mark O'Donnell '76 (Knopf, $21). A novel about the two heart-bending love affairs of the hope-stricken, gay narrator. Knopf calls it a "David Copperfield meets Lolita, a less fatal Death in Venice, or maybe Of Human Bondage as told by a stand-up comic."

Sarah's Psalm, by Florence Ladd, BI '72, director of Radcliffe's Bunting Institute (Scribner, $23). A first novel about an African-American Harvard graduate student who discovers that Senegal is where she belongs and that Ibrahim Mangane is the man she belongs with.

One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest, by Wade Davis '75, Ph.D. '86 (Simon & Schuster, $27.50). In 1941 Richard Evans Schultes '37, Ph.D. '41, now Jeffrey professor of biology emeritus, left Harvard and disappeared into the Amazon basin. He spent most of the next 14 years in the rain forest, learning the secrets of medicinal and psychoactive plants from shamans and trying many of them himself. Among the thousands of discoveries he made were new sources of rubber and a natural form of LSD. Two decades after Schultes left the Amazon, he sent two of his students, Timothy Plowman, Ph.D. '74, and Wade Davis, back to the forest on explorations of their own concerning the coca plant. Davis writes of all these undertakings. Edward O. Wilson, Ph.D. '55, Pellegrino University Professor, says of this lively work, "Beautifully and meticulously written, One River captures as no other book the adventure of ethnobotany, and in so doing portrays a true hero of science, Richard Schultes, one of the last great explorer naturalists."

The True History of Chocolate, by Sophie D. Coe '55, Ph.D. '63, and Michael D. Coe '50, Ph.D. '59 (Thames and Hudson, $27.50). A well written, charmingly illustrated, and scholarly history of the "food of the gods." The late Sophie Coe had both anthropological and culinary credentials. Her husband, a specialist in Mesoamerican matters, is a professor of anthropology emeritus at Yale.

Coyote v. Acme, by Ian Frazier '73 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $17). Funny essays. In the title piece, Wile E. Coyote sues the maker of Rocket Sled and other devices because of personal injuries received while trying to make a living in his profession of predator.

Another Way Home: A Single Father's Story, by John Thorndike '64 (Crown, $24). Kirkus Reviews called it a "painfully beckoning memoir of a guy raising his son solo after his wife slips away into madness.The love is so palpable, so sugar-free and recognizable, it makes the heart ache."

alt.culture: an a-to-z guide to the '90s-underground, online, and over-the-counter, by Nathaniel Wice '89 and Steven Daly (HarperPerennial, $17, paper). A reference book with more than 900 entries, ranging from the Beastie Boys to Secondary Virginity. Documenting the tribes, trends, and technologies of today's youth culture, the book may be most informative to clueless members of older generations. Visit the book at "http://www.altculture.com".

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