This Is Your Mind on Plants -- Michael Pollan

<b>The instant <i>New York Times </i>bestseller A <i>Washington Post </i>Notable Book One of NPR's Best Books of the Year <p/>"Expert storytelling . . . [Pollan] masterfully elevates a series of big questions about drugs, plants and humans that are likely to leave readers thinking in new ways." --<b><i>New York Times Book Review</i></b> <p/>From #1 <i>New York Times</i> bestselling author Michael Pollan, a radical challenge to how we think about drugs, and an exploration into the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants--and the equally powerful taboos.</b> <p/>Of all the things humans rely on plants for--sustenance, beauty, medicine, fragrance, flavor, fiber--surely the most curious is our use of them to change consciousness: to stimulate or calm, fiddle with or completely alter, the qualities of our mental experience. Take coffee and tea: People around the world rely on caffeine to sharpen their minds. But we do not usually think of caffeine as a drug, or our daily use as an addiction, because it is legal and socially acceptable. So, then, what is a "drug"? And why, for example, is making tea from the leaves of a tea plant acceptable, but making tea from a seed head of an opium poppy a federal crime? <p/> In <i>This Is Your Mind on Plants</i>, Michael Pollan dives deep into three plant drugs--opium, caffeine, and mescaline--and throws the fundamental strangeness, and arbitrariness, of our thinking about them into sharp relief. Exploring and participating in the cul