Review of reviews: Books

workers far more productive. The spread of tea and coffee also engendered a demand for sugar and, in turn, slavery, and Pollan manages to move fluidly between such grim truths and breezy, witty personal anecdotes of “sparkling charm.” What he doesn’t do is tell us how we should modify our rules, both personal and governmental, on the uses of plant-based drugs.

When Pollan turns to mescaline in the final section, “he takes great care with his subject,” said Kiki Sanford in ScienceMag .org. He’s well aware that restrictions on and outsider demand for peyote, one of the cactuses that produces the psychedelic, have made it scarce among the Native Americans who have long used it ceremonially. He eventually settles for imbibing mescaline derived from a different cactus and once more shares his impressions. When the final page arrives in this “pleasantly meandering” book, “even the most distracted reader” will have a better understanding of the physical effects of the three spotlighted substances. But answers to some big questions never arrive, including the first one that Pollan poses: What, really, is a drug? He has left the hard work up to us.