Author: Mark J. Plotkin
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 014012991X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 353
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Book Description
The fascinating account of a pioneering ethnobotanist’s travels in the Amazon—at once a gripping adventure story, a passionate argument for conservationism, and an investigation into the healing power of plants, by the author of The Amazon: What Everyone Needs to Know For thousands of years, healers have used plants to cure illness. Aspirin, the world's most widely used drug, is based on compounds originally extracted from the bark of a willow tree, and more than a quarter of medicines found on pharmacy shelves contain plant compounds. Now Western medicine, faced with health crises such as AIDS, Alzheimer's disease, and cancer, has begun to look to the healing plants used by indigenous peoples to develop powerful new medicines. Nowhere is the search more promising than in the Amazon, the world's largest tropical forest, home to a quarter of all botanical species on this planet—as well as hundreds of Indian tribes whose medicinal plants have never been studied by Western scientists. In Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice, ethnobotanist Mark J. Plotkin recounts his travels and studies with some of the most powerful Amazonian shamans, who taught him the plant lore their tribes have spent thousands of years gleaning from the rain forest. For more than a decade, Dr. Plotkin raced against time to harvest and record new plants before the rain forests' fragile ecosystems succumb to overdevelopment—and before the Indians abandon their own culture and learning for the seductive appeal of Western material culture. Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice relates nine of the author's quests, taking the reader along on a wild odyssey as he participates in healing rituals; discovers the secret of curare, the lethal arrow poison that kills in minutes; tries the hallucinogenic snuff epena that enables the Indians to speak with their spirit world; and earns the respect and fellowship of the mysterious shamans as he proves that he shares both their endurance and their reverence for the rain forest.
Author: Mark J. Plotkin
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 054754491X
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 39
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Book Description
In a Tirio village deep in the heart of the Amazon rain forest, the shaman Nahtahlah has a place of honor in his tribe. Young Kamanya wants to learn the healing secrets of the forest plants--he hopes that he, too, will become the tribe’s shaman, so that he can cure his people. When the villagers fall sick with an illness that Nahtahlah cannot cure, many lose faith in the shaman’s wisdom--until a foreign woman helps them understand its value while giving Kamanya an opportunity to realize his dream. Lynne Cherry returns to the rain forest with ethnobotanist Mark J. Plotkin to tell an important story about the healing plants of the earth-and why we must protect them.
Author: Zacharias Kunuk
Publisher: Inhabit Media
ISBN: 9781772272680
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 32
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Book Description
A young shaman in training must face her first test--a trip to the underground to visit Kannaaluk, The One Below, who holds the answers to why a community member has become ill.
Author: Andrew Osta
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781078223096
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 276
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Book Description
A stream of consciousness book based on a day by day diary of a spontaneous 8 month-long journey to the Peruvian Amazon undertaken by a somewhat naive young westerner in order to study shamanism, followed by a three month journey through Mexico. Entirely based on actual diary entries, it's a vivid and unpredictable trip. Read this before drinking ayahuasca to avoid making the same mistakes.
Author: Amy Wallace
Publisher: Frog Books
ISBN: 9781583940761
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 450
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Book Description
Amy Wallace's memoir of her complex relationship with Carlos Castaneda plunges readers deep into the reality of the Castaneda cult and the psychological terrors it perpetrated. With the skill of a master storyteller, Wallace recounts early meetings with Castaneda, shares previously unpublished material straight from the Nagual, and explores the aftermath of Castaneda's death and the long term effects of his legacy. Insightful and unwaveringly honest,Sorcerer's Apprenticeis simultaneously a love story, a cautionary tale about the dangers of giving one's power to another, and a joyous account of healing and self-affirmation.
Author: Edward Burke
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
ISBN: 0143529005
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 396
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Book Description
Turning his back on the excesses of London in the boom, Edward Burke sets off on a year-long journey of self-discovery, to learn from some of the greatest masters of martial arts. His search for growth through the fighting arts will take him to the academy of Bruce Lee's most famous student, a traditional dojo in Japan, ancient Buddhist temples and a scorching capoeira roda in Brazil. But his greatest challenge will be as the live-in student of the legendary Chiba Sensei - Japanese swordsman, Zen monk and master of aikido. Far from the rarefied world of high finance, he soon finds himself scrubbing the floors of Chiba Sensei's dojo, bruised, scared and exhausted from long days of punishing training. But in the intensity of the training and the formidable presence of his fearsome, charismatic master there may just be something which will make this odd pilgrimage worthwhile. Told with a wry humour, woven with insights, and populated with colourful characters, this is the joyful tale of a year of pain, suffering and menial labour, undertaken for the love of movement and the privilege of learning from the masters.
Author: Lynne Cherry
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780152026141
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 52
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Book Description
The many different animals that live in a great Kapok tree in the Brazilian rainforest try to convince a man with an ax of the importance of not cutting down their home.
Author: Kim Stanley Robinson
Publisher: Orbit
ISBN: 0316235571
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 368
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Book Description
Kim Stanley Robinson, the New York Times bestselling author of science fiction masterworks such as the Mars trilogy and 2312, has, on many occasions, imagined our future. Now, in Shaman, he brings our past to life as never before. There is Thorn, a shaman himself. He lives to pass down his wisdom and his stories -- to teach those who would follow in his footsteps. There is Heather, the healer who, in many ways, holds the clan together. There is Elga, an outsider and the bringer of change. And then there is Loon, the next shaman, who is determined to find his own path. But in a world so treacherous, that journey is never simple -- and where it may lead is never certain. Shaman is a powerful, thrilling and heartbreaking story of one young man's journey into adulthood -- and an awe-inspiring vision of how we lived thirty thousand years ago.
Author: Robin Hobb
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 0007236883
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 548
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Book Description
‘Fantasy as it ought to be written’ George R.R. Martin
Author: Jules Evans
Publisher: New World Library
ISBN: 1608682307
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
When philosophy rescued him from an emotional crisis, Jules Evans became fascinated by how ideas invented over two thousand years ago can help us today. He interviewed soldiers, psychologists, gangsters, astronauts, and anarchists and discovered the ways that people are using philosophy now to build better lives. Ancient philosophy has inspired modern communities — Socratic cafés, Stoic armies, Epicurean communes — and even whole nations in the quest for the good life. This book is an invitation to a dream school with a rowdy faculty that includes twelve of the greatest philosophers from the ancient world, sharing their lessons on happiness, resilience, and much more. Lively and inspiring, this is philosophy for the street, for the workplace, for the battlefield, for love, for life.
