Penguin Press This Is Your Mind on Plants

Primero, el físico me importa, y creí que la pasta dura era tal cual en la imagen, pero no, es solo una cubierta que tiene pocos días y ya se estropeó, y sin ella el libro, al menos físicamente no me agradó. En cuánto al contenido creo que el título es engañoso. Habla de opio, cafeína y mescalina, pero por el título, esperaba más.

It is well written, but seems to take so much material from opium for the masses and why we sleep, that very little Pollan is left. An enjoyable but short read.. not the quality of omnivores dilemma in the least.

Amazing book. Another masterpiece by Michael Pollan!

Very entertaining and accessible.

've really enjoyed all of Michael Pollan's nonfiction books that research botany, food, our brains, and how they influence each other. The first I read was The Botany of Desire, which was quite amusing in a fascinating way, but his latest book, This is Your Mind on Plants, reads like a rehash of that former book. I actually became impatient and skipped half of the first section and some of the third.His last book, How to Change Your Mind, was fascinating too, but I was hoping for something different with this new book. It felt like more of the same.There's nothing wrong, of course, with digging into a topic for the innards, but I don't quite share Pollan's fanaticism with the mysteries of mostly inaccessible plants. Here he has three sections, for poppies that make opium, coffee and tea beans, and peyote cacti that has mescaline.I began the section on his illegal growing of poppies in his 1990s' garden, shared via a 20 some year old essay he'd found and fully restored, with some amusement. Then it just dragged and I saw no reason to keep reading. I'm sure the entire experience with the DEA was amusing to him, though. The same thing with the last section where he desperately sought a psychedelic experience during the stress of the pandemic and California fires.He was told by a Native American friend that the best way to respect something out of your culture is to leave it alone. He found another teacher who had a little Native American in her.I'm not saying that nothing good came out of his healing ceremony with peyote, but he wasn't much affected by it and only his wife felt a breakthrough in a spiritual burden she carried. For him it was little more than doing something cool, in my opinion.The most compelling of the sections was the middle one about caffeinated plants. Some flowers even draw more bees by adding caffeine to their nectar. This was great stuff. He abstained from coffee and green tea for three months to be able to write about caffeine's \effects on our brains. It was not only interesting research, but amusing to read of his caffeine withdrawal, despair, and maniacal reaction to his first cup again.To put it briefly, he convinced me to try coffee again and make it an acquired taste s I can get my friggin' editing done...It'll all be amusing to a new Pollan reader, no doubt and some fans. Middle section was great, though.