After reading these books, it is difficult and seems perhaps beside the point to attempt an "objective" perspective on ayahuasca. Perhaps more than any other psychoactive sub­ stance, this one is unavoidablyintertwined with "mystical" aspects which challenge scientific analysis. Perhaps unavoidably, there is a recurrent flirting in some of these writings with the kind of messianic grandi­ osity of the converted, who have seen "the truth." Here that sometimes invokes the teachings of a kind of "plan­ etary mind" which, if accessed and heeded, might save our very species from self-destruction, in partby averting our decimation of the rain forest itself. Returning to the psuedo-Darwinian, "selfish gene" perspective, could that "voice" in fact be the DNA of other species seeking to protect themselves from us? Who knows. But in anyevent, ancient wisdom and mythology, complex neurochemical data and speculation, ethnographical adventures, looming ecological threats and possible saviors, inspired or tedious autobiography, fiction and poetry, and much more are part of the brew stirred in these two volumes. They are demand­ ing but rewarding reads, comprehensively exploring one of the lesser-known but more fascinating psychoactive sce­ narios of our time. Or rather, perhaps, outside of it.