stbenjam's review against another edition
4.0
As far as I know, this is the only comprehensive history of Mescaline, and in that regard it's a really great book. Especially the early chapters. The later parts of the book read more as a which European tripped where and when compendium which I didn't find as insightful.
lukescalone's review against another edition
3.0
This book has been reviewed frequently and positively in the journals that I read most often–clearly, it has made a splash, but I can’t say that I’m all that impressed. Published by Yale University Press, I expected this to be a scholarly analysis of some aspect of mescaline–maybe the way it spread throughout the world, perhaps on the way it has transformed human society, possibly on some other aspect. Instead, this is a narrative history that has a structure with echoes of (in my experience) [b:The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer|7170627|The Emperor of All Maladies A Biography of Cancer|Siddhartha Mukherjee|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1280771091l/7170627._SY75_.jpg|7580942]. I understand why so many historians are reading this–commodity history is booming right now, and there’s been a great deal of interest in the history of drugs in particular--I think largely due to a new generation of historians who studied the “war on drugs” now doing their own projects on the drugs themselves. As a result, this is a welcome addition to the literature, but it just didn’t do it for me.
The chronological narrative begins with the earliest written accounts of peyote, which was traded to Spaniards in the first year of the Spanish conquest of the Americas. Jay then advances three centuries to the acceptance of peyote by indigenous peoples in the Great Plains, who acquired it as a result of the US-Mexico railroad. From indigenous peoples, Western (largely American) scientists learned about its uses as a medicine on tribal reservations in Oklahoma. These doctors then used extracts and tinctures of peyote for medicinal purposes.
The story begins to shift in 1919, when central European (were they all German/Austrian?) scientists synthesized mescaline (the chemical in peyote) for the first time. Distilled mescaline was used for psychological research, although much of this research was unsuccessful at diagnosing and treating neurodivergent individuals. With chemical mescaline, avant-garde European artists and intellectuals began to use it recreationally, and it heavily influenced various shades of modernist art, literature, and philosophy including dadaism, cubism, surrealism, existentialism, and phenomenology. Finally, as part of an intellectual milieu, Aldous Huxley–who was based in California–tried it and discussed it heavily in his [b:The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell|5128|The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell|Aldous Huxley|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1375947566l/5128._SY75_.jpg|1771312], thereby introducing it to the wider American public. However, mescaline quickly lost popularity in favor of its more intense cousin, LSD. As a result, the height of mescaline had already ended by the time Huxley reported on it, and it doesn’t seem that it will make much of a comeback, perhaps beyond recreational use of its original form, peyote.
There is some good material here on the contrast between Western and indigenous forms of knowledge and experience. While Western users tend to emphasize the visual and auditory stimuli that they experience while high, indigenous users have historically seen those aspects as a distraction that takes away from a larger transcendent experience and have been much more reluctant to talk about their own use of mescaline. I’d like to see this explored a bit more but, beyond some references to anthropological studies, the text rapidly shifts from its importance to certain indigenous American societies to those in European and white American societies.
This is worth a read if you want to get a glimpse of the (interesting) history of mescaline, but I was looking for a bit more. With that in mind, I do think that Jay has set the ground for far more rigorous histories in the future.
The chronological narrative begins with the earliest written accounts of peyote, which was traded to Spaniards in the first year of the Spanish conquest of the Americas. Jay then advances three centuries to the acceptance of peyote by indigenous peoples in the Great Plains, who acquired it as a result of the US-Mexico railroad. From indigenous peoples, Western (largely American) scientists learned about its uses as a medicine on tribal reservations in Oklahoma. These doctors then used extracts and tinctures of peyote for medicinal purposes.
The story begins to shift in 1919, when central European (were they all German/Austrian?) scientists synthesized mescaline (the chemical in peyote) for the first time. Distilled mescaline was used for psychological research, although much of this research was unsuccessful at diagnosing and treating neurodivergent individuals. With chemical mescaline, avant-garde European artists and intellectuals began to use it recreationally, and it heavily influenced various shades of modernist art, literature, and philosophy including dadaism, cubism, surrealism, existentialism, and phenomenology. Finally, as part of an intellectual milieu, Aldous Huxley–who was based in California–tried it and discussed it heavily in his [b:The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell|5128|The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell|Aldous Huxley|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1375947566l/5128._SY75_.jpg|1771312], thereby introducing it to the wider American public. However, mescaline quickly lost popularity in favor of its more intense cousin, LSD. As a result, the height of mescaline had already ended by the time Huxley reported on it, and it doesn’t seem that it will make much of a comeback, perhaps beyond recreational use of its original form, peyote.
There is some good material here on the contrast between Western and indigenous forms of knowledge and experience. While Western users tend to emphasize the visual and auditory stimuli that they experience while high, indigenous users have historically seen those aspects as a distraction that takes away from a larger transcendent experience and have been much more reluctant to talk about their own use of mescaline. I’d like to see this explored a bit more but, beyond some references to anthropological studies, the text rapidly shifts from its importance to certain indigenous American societies to those in European and white American societies.
This is worth a read if you want to get a glimpse of the (interesting) history of mescaline, but I was looking for a bit more. With that in mind, I do think that Jay has set the ground for far more rigorous histories in the future.
tobiaswaters's review against another edition
5.0
Such a fascinating read, first half on indigenous tradition was especially interesting and a perspective I haven’t read much about in previous readings on the history of psychedelics.
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