Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom | 
| Author: Andy Letcher
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 352232
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 1.2
ISBN: 0060828293
Dewey Decimal Number: 900
EAN: 9780060828295
ASIN: 0060828293
Publication Date: March 1, 2008
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Product Description
Did mushroom tea kick-start ancient Greek philosophy?
Was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland a thinly veiled psychedelic mushroom odyssey?
Is Santa Claus really a magic mushroom in disguise? The world of the magic mushroom is a place where shamans and hippies rub shoulders with psychiatrists, poets, and international bankers. Since its rediscovery only fifty years ago, this hallucinogenic fungus, once shunned in the West as the most pernicious of poisons, has inspired a plethora of folktales and urban legends. In this timely and definitive study, Andy Letcher chronicles the history of the magic mushroom—from its use by the Aztecs of Central America and the tribes of Siberia through to the present day—stripping away the myths and taking a critical and humorous look at the drug's more recent manifestations. Informative, lively, and impeccably researched, Shroom is a unique and engaging exploration of this most extraordinary of psychedelics.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 An Exercise in Character Assassination June 21, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
One star for the interesting tidbits of information not easily found elsewhere. Did his Oxford professors not teach Mr. Letcher the fallacy of the argumentum ad hominem? His personal attacks on Gordon Wasson and John Allegro bring this book down to the level of tabloid journalism.
First, he portrays Wasson as a con artist who became famous as a result of clever salesmanship rather than for "clarity or originality of his thinking." He criticizes Wasson for skewing his data to fit a preconceived idea, but this is exactly what Letcher does. Letcher's premise is that psychoactive substances played no part in Old World religious practices (funny that they should have played such an important role in the other hemisphere). He overlooks or discounts historical data which demonstrates such a link as being "plot devices" of ethnocentric researchers trapped in the mindset of the sixties. We have seen this approach many times before: old theories are about as useful as old pop songs and TV shows, it's time to move forward and take the opposite view. But Letcher once again commits the same error he accuses others of committing by using flawed and dated arguments. One example is his assertion that if Soma was a hallucinogenic mushroom, it would have been simply eaten. Why go through the elaborate process of crushing, mixing, and filtering it? Evidence suggests that Soma was used in a mixture of various psychoactive and non-psychoactive substances, and hallucinogenic mushrooms went through a similar mortar-and-pestle procedure in Central America.
He paints a picture of ancient people ignorant of the plants around them. When plants such as cannabis, poppy, and henbane show up in the archaeological record, he dismisses their possible psychoactive use in favor of such applications as food and medicine. But medicine is always closely linked to the removal of "harmful" spirits in religious practices worldwide (Letcher considers "shamanism" to be a dirty word in his semantic shell games). His view is that it's okay to acknowledge drug use in the rites of the heathen Native Americans, but to say the same thing might have happened in the Middle East is striking too close to our religious traditions. In the end, Letcher comes across as a bizarre "counterculture" version of Jerry Falwell complete with hippy hairdo and "acid folk group."
Letcher saves his most scathing criticism for John Allegro, who is described as a "troubled mind" from the Erich von Daniken school of academia. Citing John King's rebuttal to The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross is another blunder on Letcher's part. If "the fly-agaric and its host-tree species are entirely absent from the flora of the Middle East," then why did the Israeli postal service issue stamps with fly-agarics in 2002? Has he bothered to check his facts? Attacking the character of a person simply cheapens your argument, and playing fast and loose with the facts makes you no more of a scholar than von Daniken.
Terence McKenna is given better treatment by being portrayed as a misguided product of his time. Letcher crafts himself as an exemplar scholar in a world of conspiracists, but after discounting the time-wave theory, he strangely states, "the demolition of the time-wave does not preclude something interesting, unusual, or even of great magnitude from happening as predicted." Maybe Letcher thinks it will be the apocalypse. The bottom line is that he is more influenced by von Daniken than was Allegro, he is far less original than the "amateur" Wasson, and he is much more misguided than McKenna.
 Make room for the Shroom,the Fungus among us+ June 2, 2008
Well,at least read the book.This is not a 'pro-hippie' book.That's what i liked about reading it.It gives the detailed and complex history of the 'Mushroom'.And how it has been used,worshipped,and ritualised by the ancients and modern peoples of the world.A great deal of attention is paid to the life and work of Terrence McKenna.He became the 'High-Priest of Magic Mushrooms',during the Haight-Ashbury hallucinogenic rad-chic days. Terrence Mckenna was a disciple of Timothy Leary,the charismatic pied piper of the LSD movement.His writings are still read with interest,yet mostly with a sense of humor.McKenna's imagination shines in his various research projects.Perhaps brighter than his mundane data.It's clear that the technological 21st century has not stopped mankind's quest, for the ultimate shamanic connection, with the natural world and cosmos above.Mushrooms are believed by some to be a ideal portal to a larger universe of understanding.Everything about mushrooms is in this book.Literary,scientific and social-wise aspects, concerning the influence mushrooms,has had on the psyche.And this is not historically endemic to an isolated gens of people.This 'Shroom' book is must-reading for all true neo-pagan followers.The impact of the 'Magic Mushroom' on world cultures cannot be ignored by any novice layman or even refuted by the elitist scholars either.
A little dry, but excellent nonetheless April 21, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Shroom succeeds where other psychedelic books have failed by providing what the latter are generally lacking: impeccable research. Letcher obviously went into writing the book with the foremost goal of being factually accurate at the expense of appealing to the hippy crowd that might be expected to be the primary audience. The result is a thoroughly engrossing history of magic mushrooms (and agarics). As a fan of these perplexing fungi, I was glad to be able to get a thorough history of such an emotionally charged subject without all the b.s. Letcher spends a lot of time debunking a lot of new-age myths about their historical usage, focusing on Gordon Wasson's mythology the most. My only real complaint is the amount of time spent on Wasson, when perhaps he could have gone more in-depth on the pre-Columbian usage of mushrooms in the New World. Even those readers who are not psychedelically inclined would likely be drawn into the underground world of shrooms and their adherents. Highly recommended.
 Solid research, badly marred by postmodern treatment June 9, 2007
5 out of 8 found this review helpful
This is a difficult book to review because it mixes elements that are quite good with others equally bad. It contains a wealth of very interesting material and findings from the author's scholarly studies. But unfortunately, indeed tragically, it lacks the appropriate emphasis of scientific viewpoint in favor of postmodernism, the intellectual fad currently dominant on campus--not in the sciences but in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.
Like religious fundamentalism and various New Age preoccupations, postmodernism is aggressively ideological, even totalizing in its ambitions. As such, it has significant difficulties with no-nonsense scientific perspectives, inspiring futile scholarly efforts to undermine the authority and credibility of science. "Shroom" can be seen as an offering in this vein. Its discussion treads water in a sea of postmodern buzzwords, while generating a stream of backhanded insinuations about science (a "drab discipline" as Letcher puts it), and indulging in ad hominem arguments (Letcher dislikes Wasson, whom he seems to view as an archetypal Capitalist bourgeoisie White Male sexist Bad Guy... etc.). To anyone unfamiliar with postmodernism and its anti-scientific orientation, I heartily recommend the book "Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and its Quarrels with Science" by Gross and Levitt; or simply google "transformative hermeneutics of quantum gravity."
Still, "Shroom" is not without merit, not by a long shot. This book is to be soundly applauded for some remarkable original discussions of certain aspects of its subject matter, presenting information that will be new to many readers, as it was to me. For example, Letcher illuminates the history of Psilocybe semilanceata and its reputation as no one has before. There are also some new details concerning fly agaric and its cultural history. But one of the most compelling and informative sections of the book addresses the modern history of psilocybin mushrooms, especially in Britain and Holland. Other examples could be cited. The contributions made by Letcher herein should not be understated, especially insofar as they contrast dramatically with the relentless, muddled analysis that accompanies them in its pages. "Shroom" is at its best when it aims to inform rather than analyze, and the wealth of information it offers is of great value, to be appreciated by those interested in this fascinating subject.
On the down side, "Shroom" floats a multitude of red herrings and misconceptions, often under the guise of "debunking" various notions it asserts as erroneous. In many cases, the point is well taken; but in others Letcher unwisely bites off considerably more than he can chew, or misrepresents his targets, attacking cardboard caricatures of his own making. There are far too many such missteps to address in a brief review, and different readers will spot different sticking points. To me, one of the more serious is the idea that "Shroom" has effectively refuted Wasson's identification of Soma as fly agaric. Letcher's discussion of this theory is not an even-handed presentation of the evidence pertaining to it (which is equivocal and complex), but rather a partisan polemic focusing exclusively on arguments against it. In fact, there is significant evidence supporting Wasson's Soma theory, discovered only after he proposed it, which Letcher doesn't even mention. Critics wishing to disprove Wasson's theory must reply to that evidence with better explanations for it, not pretend it doesn't exist while trying to keep the conversation focused on objections (some of which do indeed raise legitimate questions for Wassonian approaches).
Of course, there is nothing wrong with passionately arguing a particular point of view, as Letcher does. But such argumentation is not to be confused with, and must be rigorously distinguished from, efforts toward a balanced, dispassionate search for greater knowledge, regardless of where it leads. Ethnomycology best benefits from the latter approach, compatible as it is with scientific methods. The former approach is responsible for the profusion of "myths" Letcher declaims, and there is irony in the fact that "Shroom" creates some new canards even as it seeks to dispel old ones.
But Letcher's dismissal of Wasson's Soma theory does worse than tiptoe around findings that support it. There is some appearance of chicanery. He first sets it up like just one more duck in a row along with a half dozen or so, baiting the reader who eagerly waits to see how he will shoot it down. He then summarizes various arguments already made against Wasson's theory by others, often agreeing by mere dogmatic assertion ("Brough was right: the situation in Siberia was interesting, but it could have no cultural relevance to Soma whatsoever.") But in the end, disappointingly, Letcher switches. He retreats from the whole question on the grounds that we really can't know for sure--no one can prove with finality what Soma was, and there is consequently no point in trying to identify it, he contends.
Apart from any shell-game tactics, such a position is badly flawed in its logic, as though to claim: "I can't see how we can ever know this, therefore we cannot ever know it" (such reasoning resembles that of the Intelligent Designers who can't see how something as complicated as the eye could have originated by natural selection, and proclaim it is therefore impossible). It seems Letcher fails to comprehend the methods and achievements of science. Scientific knowledge, for whatever limited degrees of objectivity it reaches, is not divine revelation. It is inherently theoretical and tentative in nature, based exclusively on discoveries made so far, with a humble certainty there is a great deal yet to be disclosed to investigation. Scientific understanding can never be chiseled in stone, for it must undergo continual revision to assimilate new discoveries as they are made. The question is never whether we can say something with some kind of absolute certainty, as though proven beyond all possible doubt; it is whether we have good reason to think something might be true or not, based on what we know so far. In that regard, the evidence favoring Wasson's Soma theory is probably just as strong as the evidence against it, perhaps even stronger. That Letcher disagrees with Wasson's theory is all well and good. But he does readers a disservice in suggesting it has been laid to rest, and then washing his hands. There is a critical difference between the detached skepticism of a scientific orientation, and mere personal incredulity, a point lost in the "Shroom" sauce. It seems to me the story Letcher tells of Wasson's Soma theory being dead is, perhaps like the preliminary reports of Samuel Clemens' untimely demise, greatly exaggerated.
Recently, the occult-like or New Age orientation of various popular offerings about psilocybin mushrooms has begun to come under critical fire, as it does here in "Shroom." This is an encouraging development for ethnomycological inquiry, and another good thing about "Shroom" as others have noted. But so far, not many critics have taken stock of trendy postmodern orthodoxy as an equally formidable obstacle to better understanding in this field. Ethnomycology is an inherently multidisciplinary subject, as Wasson well understood. As such it thrives on sound input from disciplines outside the sciences. But it also requires a solidly scientific foundation to theoretically integrate such input. It's hard to see how postmodernism, with its bizarre, empty jargon and antagonism toward science, can contribute usefully in this regard. The problems evident in "Shroom" appear to relate mostly to the author's postmodern framework. With this caveat, I nonetheless recommend the book heartily to anyone interested. (For that matter, if you think everything is a "social construct," and science is simply a socially sanctioned "discourse" cunningly conceived to advance the political hegemony of the dominant class, and like to read about "praxes" and "alterity" and--etc.--you might find this book's analysis more worthy of your time and interest than this reviewer did.)
What a Trip June 5, 2007
7 out of 11 found this review helpful
We have healing drugs and then we have drugs that are taken just for fun. We recognize that drugs have a legitimate function of providing fun by making some such drugs legal, but some drugs for fun are left illegal. Hallucinogenic mushrooms, for instance, are generally illegal, although this changes from time to time and from society to society. You'd expect that a history of "shrooms" written by a fellow who has played in various psychedelic bands (currently in his own "acid folk group") would come down strongly in favor of legal mushrooms, but Andy Letcher is no ordinary shroomer. He has a couple of doctorates, one in ecology and one in religious and cultural studies, for instance. His _Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom_ (Ecco) is not a manifesto, although Letcher does explain the possible advantages of the experiences mushrooms might offer if they were more legally accessible. More importantly, Letcher cuts the legs out from under the legends that have grown up about mushrooms, the ancientness of their use, and their connections with religion and power (a "fantastical history... dreamed up on the basis of wishful thinking and overworked evidence.") A sizeable book resulting from a great deal of research, _Shroom_ is the sort of one-subject history that takes in a lot of general history and presents it all with an accessible and witty style. I don't know if shrooms help produce _Shroom_, but if so, it might be good to have more of them.
Mushrooms do, perhaps more than other recreational drugs, promote mystical experiences that are highly valued by practitioners. Advocates have insisted that mushroom experiences will lead users in a spiritual direction; Letcher disagrees, and also disagrees with the New Age stories of mushroom "history". A great deal of the fun of his book has to do with debunking of such stories, which come from many varied sources. Witches, druids, and even Santa Claus have been said to spring from mushroom use, or mushrooms were the magical Soma that is cited in the ancient Hindu text the Rig Veda. Perhaps Jesus was dining on not bread and wine with his disciples, but fly-agaric, and perhaps Christianity was an invented religion based on a fertility cult with one true sacrament, fly-agaric. Perhaps the ancient mushroom cult is the one ur-religion from which all others are based. It is fun to read about these wide-ranging ideas, and it is fun to read Letcher taking the air out of each one. "The history of the magic mushroom," he writes, "is at once less fanciful and far more interesting." In fact, the West has no real shroom tradition. Psilocybin mushrooms were known six hundred years ago, but they were treated as poisons. People in Europe and America did not start gobbling them for their psychedelic effects until the middle of the twentieth century, when the astonishing (and then legal) effects of LSD and mescaline were under scientific investigation.
Some of the users mentioned here are famous, like Aldous Huxley, Robert Graves, or Timothy Leary. One more obscure but actually more influential figure was the fascinating Gordon Wasson, who was a vice president at J. P. Morgan & Company and had mushrooms as a hobby. He was introduced to psychedelic mushrooms by a shaman in Mexico, and wrote the 1957 article "Seeking the Magic Mushroom" for _Life_ magazine. It was Wasson who proposed that Soma was fly-agaric, and that there had been a mushroom cult in Europe as well as Siberia. His flawed ideas about ancient mushroom religions caused countless hippies to turn into academics and vice versa. Shrooms were briefly legal in Britain due to a loophole recently closed, but the data from Holland where they are still available indicate that usage is up, although very few take mushroom trips more than once or twice in their lives. Letcher, a Britton, is in favor of decriminalization, but it seems to be true in Britain as well as in the US: "In the current climate, where any call for decriminalization is met with a barrage of invective from the tabloid press, and an unseemly political tussle to occupy the moral high ground, such a move would seem a long way off." Instead, readers can enjoy some thrilling and colorful accounts of trips given here, most of them quite colorful and fascinating, but also there is the possibly apocryphal tale of the young woman who called an emergency number because she was convinced, after eating an extremely potent mushroom variety, that she had turned into a banana and was scared someone was about to peel her. For sharp and funny writing, and debunking of mythology, _Shroom_ is a trip worth taking.
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