"A leading medical ethnobotanist tells us the story of her quest to develop new ways to fight illness and disease through the healing powers of plants in this uplifting and adventure-filled memoir. Plants are the basis for an array of lifesaving and health-improving medicines we all now take for granted. Ever taken an aspirin? Thank a willow tree for that. What about life-saving medicines for malaria? Some of those are derived from cinchona and wormwood....

This adventure in science and imagination, which the Medical Tribune said might herald "a Copernican revolution for the life sciences," leads the listener through unexplored jungles and uncharted aspects of mind to the heart of knowledge. In a first-person narrative of scientific discovery that opens new perspectives on biology, anthropology, and the limits of rationalism, The Cosmic Serpent reveals how startlingly different the world around us appears...

A sastun is a tool of the Maya healer, a kind of supernatural "hot line" to the spirits that tells a healer if an illness is rooted in natural or spiritual forces. Sastun is the captivating story of American herbologist Rosita Arvigo's apprenticeship to Don Elijio Panti, one of the last surviving, and most respected, traditional healers of Belize. Set in the imperiled Belizean rainforest that serves as the pharmacy of ancient Mayan medicine, Arvigo's...