Psyche Delicacies: Coffee, Chocolate, Chiles, Kava, and Cannabis, and Why They're Good for You

Rating:
Summary: Great read, intriguing info
Review: Having read many adventure travel books, and explorations into ethnobotany, I am a hard marker on books in this genre. I was impressed with Kilham's writing style, narrative drive, ability to quickly sketch colorful characters, and skill at connecting the lives of indigenous peoples and their herb lore to the jaded first-world reader. (He also doesn't skimp on the supporting science, but doesn't bog the reader down in it.) I learned a lot about coffee,chocolate, pot, and other psychoactive plants/pleasures, and had fun doing it. Highly recommended, as a perfect hybrid of adventure travel (replete with very amusing misadventures) and healthy mood-aleration.

Rating:
Summary: Mismarketed
Review: I thought this book was a decent read, and the author definitely knows how to entertain and pique people's interest. But this book seems to have been targeted to the wrong audience or placed in the wrong genre.

Clearly it's travel writing. It's the story of a guy who toured the earth in search of the ultimate buzz. I just wish the author, and/or his publisher, had realized that. This book would have gotten a lot more readers, and fewer complaints about lack of citations or scientific merit, if it had been titled "Journeys of the Mind: Across the world in serach of the ultimate buzz" (or something like that but a little less cheesy), and shelved next to the Lonely Planet guides. If he'd continued on in this theme, adding discussions of a few more drugs and adding another hundred pages or so, TONS of crunchy granola types would pick it up, anticipating long waits in Indian train stations and long days on Thai beaches.

Chris Kilham is clearly not a scientist or a health care professional. People looking for the hard-nosed opinions of such people shouldn't be looking at his book. He's an adventurer and an entertainer. His writing reads like a show on the Discovery Channel, and is clearly intended for people whose interest in science goes little deeper than the Discovery Channel.

Rating:
Summary: Strong opinions
Review: This lively book is fun to read and will supply you with a lot of interesting factoids on its assortment of topics. Chris Kilham writes interestingly and well, and one's attention is riveted to his stories and opinions. The biggest problem with this book is that there are no footnotes and no endnotes. Kilham offers a lot of stunning notions, but does not cite his sources. For example, in his chapter on decaf, in his view "coffee interruptus," he asserts that the rate of suicide is higher among drinkers of decaf than drinkers of caffeinated coffee. Citation, please!

Read this book for its stimulating opinions and lively patter and a sort of pop-sci approach to its subjects. According to its author, this book is intended as a reference work. It's fun to page through, but in order to be a convincing reference work it needs the added muscle of citations and a bibliography.