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The Lost Amazon
s/t: The Photographic Journey of Richard Evans Schultes
Richard Evans Schultes (1915-2001) was probably the greatest explorer of the Amazon, and regarded among anthropologists and seekers alike as the "father of ethnobotany." Taking what was meant to be a short leave from Harvard in 1941, he surveyed the Amazon basin almost continuously for twelve years, during which time he lived among two dozen different Indian tribes, mapped rivers, secretly sought sources of rubber for the US government during WWII, and collected and classified 30,000 botanical specimens, including 2,000 new medicinal plants. Schultes chronicled his stay there in hundreds of remarkable photographs of the tribes and the land, evocative of the great documentary photographers such as Edward Sheriff Curtis. Published to coincide with a traveling exhibition to debut at the Govinda Gallery in Washington, D.C., The Lost Amazon is the first major publication to examine the work of Dr. Schultes, as seen through his photographs and field notes. With text by Schultes's protege and fellow explorer, Wade Davis, this impressive document takes armchair travelers where they've never gone before.
Richard Evans Schultes (1915-2001) was probably the greatest explorer of the Amazon, and regarded among anthropologists and seekers alike as the "father of ethnobotany." Taking what was meant to be a short leave from Harvard in 1941, he surveyed the Amazon basin almost continuously for twelve years, during which time he lived among two dozen different Indian tribes, mapped rivers, secretly sought sources of rubber for the US government during WWII, and collected and classified 30,000 botanical specimens, including 2,000 new medicinal plants. Schultes chronicled his stay there in hundreds of remarkable photographs of the tribes and the land, evocative of the great documentary photographers such as Edward Sheriff Curtis. Published to coincide with a traveling exhibition to debut at the Govinda Gallery in Washington, D.C., The Lost Amazon is the first major publication to examine the work of Dr. Schultes, as seen through his photographs and field notes. With text by Schultes's protege and fellow explorer, Wade Davis, this impressive document takes armchair travelers where they've never gone before.
204 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2004
2 people are currently reading
1042 people want to read
About the author
Wade Davis
85 books826 followersEdmund Wade Davis has been described as "a rare combination of scientist, scholar, poet, and passionate defender of all of life's diversity."
An ethnographer, writer, photographer, and filmmaker, he holds degrees in anthropology and biology and received his Ph.D. in ethnobotany, all from Harvard University. Mostly through the Harvard Botanical Museum, he spent more than three years in the Amazon and Andes as a plant explorer, living among 15 indigenous groups in eight Latin American nations while making some 6,000 botanical collections. His work later took him to Haiti to investigate folk preparations implicated in the creation of zombies, an assignment that led to his writing Passage of Darkness (1988) and The Serpent and the Rainbow (1986), an international best seller that appeared in ten languages and was later released by Universal as a motion picture.
His other books include Penan: Voice for the Borneo Rain Forest (1990), Shadows in the Sun (1993), Nomads of the Dawn (1995), The Clouded Leopard (1998), Rainforest (1998), Light at the Edge of the World (2001), The Lost Amazon (2004), Grand Canyon (2008), Book of Peoples of the World (ed. 2008), and One River (1996), which was nominated for the 1997 Governor General's Literary Award for Nonfiction. Into the Silence, an epic history of World War I and the early British efforts to summit Everest, was published in October, 2011. Sheets of Distant Rain will follow.
Davis is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2002 Lowell Thomas Medal (The Explorers Club) and the 2002 Lannan Foundation prize for literary nonfiction. In 2004 he was made an honorary member of the Explorers Club, one of just 20 in the hundred-year history of the club. In recent years his work has taken him to East Africa, Borneo, Nepal, Peru, Polynesia, Tibet, Mali, Benin, Togo, New Guinea, Vanuatu, and the high Arctic of Nunavut and Greenland.
A native of British Columbia, Davis, a licensed river guide, has worked as park ranger and forestry engineer and conducted ethnographic fieldwork among several indigenous societies of northern Canada. He has published 150 scientific and popular articles on subjects ranging from Haitian vodoun and Amazonian myth and religion to the global biodiversity crisis, the traditional use of psychotropic drugs, and the ethnobotany of South American Indians.
Davis has written for National Geographic, Newsweek, Premiere, Outside, Omni, Harpers, Fortune, Men's Journal, Condé Nast Traveler, Natural History, Utne Reader, National Geographic Traveler, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Globe and Mail, and several other international publications.
His photographs have been featured in a number of exhibits and have been widely published, appearing in some 20 books and more than 80 magazines, journals, and newspapers. His research has been the subject of more than 700 media reports and interviews in Europe, North and South America, and the Far East, and has inspired numerous documentary films as well as three episodes of the television series The X Files.
A professional speaker for nearly 20 years, Davis has lectured at the National Geographic Society, American Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, and California Academy of Sciences, as well as many other museums and some 200 universities, including Harvard, MIT, Oxford, Yale, and Stanford. He has spoken at the Aspen Institute, Bohemian Grove, Young President’s Organization, and TED Conference. His corporate clients have included Microsoft, Shell, Hallmark, Bank of Nova Scotia, MacKenzie Financials, Healthcare Association of Southern California, National Science Teachers Association, and many others.
An honorary research associate of the Institute of Economic Botany of the New York Botanical Garden, he is a fellow of the Linnean Society, the Explorers Club, and the Royal Geographical Society.
(Source: National Geographic)
An ethnographer, writer, photographer, and filmmaker, he holds degrees in anthropology and biology and received his Ph.D. in ethnobotany, all from Harvard University. Mostly through the Harvard Botanical Museum, he spent more than three years in the Amazon and Andes as a plant explorer, living among 15 indigenous groups in eight Latin American nations while making some 6,000 botanical collections. His work later took him to Haiti to investigate folk preparations implicated in the creation of zombies, an assignment that led to his writing Passage of Darkness (1988) and The Serpent and the Rainbow (1986), an international best seller that appeared in ten languages and was later released by Universal as a motion picture.
His other books include Penan: Voice for the Borneo Rain Forest (1990), Shadows in the Sun (1993), Nomads of the Dawn (1995), The Clouded Leopard (1998), Rainforest (1998), Light at the Edge of the World (2001), The Lost Amazon (2004), Grand Canyon (2008), Book of Peoples of the World (ed. 2008), and One River (1996), which was nominated for the 1997 Governor General's Literary Award for Nonfiction. Into the Silence, an epic history of World War I and the early British efforts to summit Everest, was published in October, 2011. Sheets of Distant Rain will follow.
Davis is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2002 Lowell Thomas Medal (The Explorers Club) and the 2002 Lannan Foundation prize for literary nonfiction. In 2004 he was made an honorary member of the Explorers Club, one of just 20 in the hundred-year history of the club. In recent years his work has taken him to East Africa, Borneo, Nepal, Peru, Polynesia, Tibet, Mali, Benin, Togo, New Guinea, Vanuatu, and the high Arctic of Nunavut and Greenland.
A native of British Columbia, Davis, a licensed river guide, has worked as park ranger and forestry engineer and conducted ethnographic fieldwork among several indigenous societies of northern Canada. He has published 150 scientific and popular articles on subjects ranging from Haitian vodoun and Amazonian myth and religion to the global biodiversity crisis, the traditional use of psychotropic drugs, and the ethnobotany of South American Indians.
Davis has written for National Geographic, Newsweek, Premiere, Outside, Omni, Harpers, Fortune, Men's Journal, Condé Nast Traveler, Natural History, Utne Reader, National Geographic Traveler, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Globe and Mail, and several other international publications.
His photographs have been featured in a number of exhibits and have been widely published, appearing in some 20 books and more than 80 magazines, journals, and newspapers. His research has been the subject of more than 700 media reports and interviews in Europe, North and South America, and the Far East, and has inspired numerous documentary films as well as three episodes of the television series The X Files.
A professional speaker for nearly 20 years, Davis has lectured at the National Geographic Society, American Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, and California Academy of Sciences, as well as many other museums and some 200 universities, including Harvard, MIT, Oxford, Yale, and Stanford. He has spoken at the Aspen Institute, Bohemian Grove, Young President’s Organization, and TED Conference. His corporate clients have included Microsoft, Shell, Hallmark, Bank of Nova Scotia, MacKenzie Financials, Healthcare Association of Southern California, National Science Teachers Association, and many others.
An honorary research associate of the Institute of Economic Botany of the New York Botanical Garden, he is a fellow of the Linnean Society, the Explorers Club, and the Royal Geographical Society.
(Source: National Geographic)
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
January 31, 2021
This was a beautifully-illustrated book with an equally as idyllic biography on Richard Evans Schultes, an ethnobotanist who arguably had the greatest impact on his field of study in the Amazon. As I read biographies like this I fall in love with what the Amazon represents for humanity— it is a tough terrain and yet the birthplace of such a wide variety of flora and fauna, not to mention a hearth for very unique, beautiful indigenous peoples with intriguing culture and knowledge.
Aside from the constant idolizing of psychedelics by the obsessive and acolyte author Wade Davis—the only flaw of the book—I believe this story is a unique one. Schultes’s devotion to his work and love of the people he learned from is evident.
The photographs are absolutely beautiful and are a testament to the real Amazon—out of fire and tribulation comes hardened steel; out of the Amazon comes hardened but doubtlessly beautiful ecology and peoples.
Aside from the constant idolizing of psychedelics by the obsessive and acolyte author Wade Davis—the only flaw of the book—I believe this story is a unique one. Schultes’s devotion to his work and love of the people he learned from is evident.
The photographs are absolutely beautiful and are a testament to the real Amazon—out of fire and tribulation comes hardened steel; out of the Amazon comes hardened but doubtlessly beautiful ecology and peoples.
May 6, 2017
Ugh. Why did Schultes have to get stuck with Wade Davis as his biographer? The photos are beautiful. Schultes' stories always fascinating. But the use of language indicating the indigenous pertained or belonged to him, such as "a near fatal attack of malaria that forced his Indians to carry him" is shameful and nauseating to read in a book republished in 2016. Also inexcusable is Davis' continual failure to understand that no "discovery" occurs by Schultes when an indigenous shaman takes him on a hike, shows him a plant, and then tells him what its uses are.
August 25, 2025
Davis’ paean to Schulte is a wonderful read. His description of Schulte’s travels in Colombia and the Amazon basin is detailed yet entertaining. And Schulte’s beautiful photographs depict a world that has been lost.
March 3, 2017
Very interesting. Not what I thought it would be about. I just grabbed it on the way out of the library. But once I got into the book, I was stunned at that with man, Richard Schultes, did and how he lived. Unarmed he went into the Amazon and found vegetation that could benefit human kind. He also was allowed to participate in rituals with psychedelic plants that only one tribe used for pleasure not just as part as a ceremony. All this he did going in without a gun and became a hero to the indigenous people. Fascinating.
November 20, 2019
Absolutely beautiful. One River is my favorite nonfiction book, and this volume brought back vivid memories of Shultes' Amazonian adventure. Wade Davis' prose is second to none and it is present here in its full glory. The photos are incredible and it's astounding that they were taken over 70 years ago.
The book is great for those who loved One River as well as for those who didn't read it yet - who will surely want to after reading this.
The book is great for those who loved One River as well as for those who didn't read it yet - who will surely want to after reading this.
Read
March 6, 2020About the life and photographs of ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes. Dr. Evan's spent years in the Amazon hunting for new medical plants and becoming acquainted with the Amazon natives, in contrast to colonialists who exploited them for labor and rubber, and flogged, set on fire, and set on fire the orifices of, Indian women they had raped.
'The best thing a caucasian man could be said to do here is that he did not kill an Indian out of boredom' - a local Catholic priest of the time.
'The best thing a caucasian man could be said to do here is that he did not kill an Indian out of boredom' - a local Catholic priest of the time.
October 9, 2010
Remarkable photographic account of Richard Evans Schultes's ethnobotanical expeditions in the Amazon between 1940 and 1951. Large black and white images of enormous trees, hallucinogenic plants, rituals and water, water everywhere. The accompanying biographical essay, written by Schultes's student, Wade Davis, is also excellent.
October 9, 2018
Very interesting semi-biography of Richard Schultz’s. He spent years in the Amazon researching both anecdotally and internally plants for their medical properties . In doing so he became very respected among the peoples there.
January 18, 2014
Great photos and anecdotes from Schultes' adventurous years on the back rivers.
October 3, 2017
Stunning photography! Just a beautiful book to own.
October 7, 2020
Black and white photos taken by Ethobotanist Richard Evans Schultes during the years he explored the Amazon for rare and undiscovered plants.
January 9, 2022
Este libro ofrece una aproximación a la riqueza ednobotánica de la amazonía colombiana desde una doble mirada extranjera. Una muestra de cómo los locales hemos sido miopes y no hemos podido ver la enorme riqueza que poseemos.
Para románticos de la sabiduría indígena, las pinceladas sobre sus formas de vida son escasas, pero el foco en el contraste de esos dos mundos (el "occidental" y el indígena), en el serio interés de un foráneo en descubrir la otredad, son inspiradoras y contagiosas. Pocos nos acercamos con tal respeto y genuino interés a estas comunidades para aprender de ellos desde la humildad como Schultes. De la apatía temo que hoy estemos pasando al extremo opuesto de apropiación cultural.
También es una ventana para darnos cuenta de todo lo que tiene la selva y el mundo natural para ofrecernos, como dependemos de ella y la importancia de conocerla, valorarla y respetarla.
Para los apasionados viajeros, expedicionarios, aventureros y "descubridores", el personaje de Schultes resulta icónico y muy inspirador.
Para románticos de la sabiduría indígena, las pinceladas sobre sus formas de vida son escasas, pero el foco en el contraste de esos dos mundos (el "occidental" y el indígena), en el serio interés de un foráneo en descubrir la otredad, son inspiradoras y contagiosas. Pocos nos acercamos con tal respeto y genuino interés a estas comunidades para aprender de ellos desde la humildad como Schultes. De la apatía temo que hoy estemos pasando al extremo opuesto de apropiación cultural.
También es una ventana para darnos cuenta de todo lo que tiene la selva y el mundo natural para ofrecernos, como dependemos de ella y la importancia de conocerla, valorarla y respetarla.
Para los apasionados viajeros, expedicionarios, aventureros y "descubridores", el personaje de Schultes resulta icónico y muy inspirador.
August 2, 2021
A very interesting story with beautiful photographs. The only issue I had with it was the language used; Schultes was called the "discoverer" of everything, even when he was clearly led to different plants by native people who had been using them for centuries. The author at one point also said "his Indians" as if Schultes had servants or owned the people he travelled with. It came off as supremacist, even though I felt as if Schultes himself wouldn't have been like that. Still loved learning this man's story.
January 18, 2023
Wade Davis' photographic tribute to Richard Schultes and his explorations of South America and ethnobotanic discoveries. A great collection of photos many of which have only been published in this book.
December 20, 2018
Engaging read, taps into the history of the rubber trade and beautiful stories of indigenous plant knowledge. Well worth picking up.
May 27, 2009
Collected photographs of ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes' trips through the Amazonian rain forest. A strange but beautiful encounter.
July 19, 2008
Beautiful images; reminded me of Ansel Adams. Photographers will want this on their coffee tables.
September 22, 2012
Quite a trip.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews