Category: good to read

Jeremy Narby
Do you know how many millions of years Cannabis has been around? When it began to be cultivated for its medicinal properties? Why the Assassins were not likely to have smoked hashish? Why the members of the Club des Haschischins in Paris got higher than we ever did, and how come Baudelaire hated Cannabis? We know about the prohibition, but do we know when the demonisation of a weed called hemp (and later many other names) started? How the growth boom of the eighties evolved, and with which players? No matter the field, Jeremy Narby approaches marijuana and hashish from a pragmatic angle. Meticulously researched. (SGS)
St. Martin’s Press

Michael Pollan
The early 1990s marked the birth of a new science of consciousness, based on the assumption that the phenomenon could be explained in terms of brain activity, but that effort is faltering, and wilder ideas, such as panpsychism, are now getting a hearing. Indeed, there is now reason to doubt that ‘objective science’ as we have known it since Galileo has the right tools to plumb first-person experience. A story that begins in a brain lab in Seattle ends, of all places, in a cave in the mountains of New Mexico.
Penguin Books

Hélène Grimaud
Internationally acclaimed piano virtuoso and founder of the Wolf Conservation Center, Hélène Grimaud shares her musical life’s journey and inspiring insights on the connections between music, nature, and spirituality. Invoking the Wild Soul of Music reveals paths to rebirth, spiritual growth, and the re-enchantment of life. This memoir shows how to honour the call of the wild even in the heart of civilised modernity.
Inner Traditions

Joel & Michelle Levy
Designed for elite soldiers, the practices in this training are valuable for everyone aiming to heighten focus, deploy ethical discernment, and cultivate responsive awareness and “kindfulness.” Learn how to befriend your inner enemies, avoid self-sabotage and ambush by distractions, and respond skillfully to challenges with deeper courage and compassion. With these teachings, readers can awaken the strength to transform the battlefield of daily life into a zone of peace and navigate these uncertain times with grace, wisdom, and courage.
Destiny Books

Álvaro Enrigue
Orchestrated with a stunningly imagined cast of characters, both historical and purely fictional, Now I Surrender radically recasts the story of how the West was “won.”  Part epic, part alt-Western, it is Álvaro Enrigue’s most expansive and impassioned novel yet. In the contested borderlands between Mexico and the United States, a woman flees into the desert after a devastating raid on her dead husband’s ranch. A lieutenant colonel in service to the fledgling Republic, sent in pursuit of cattle rustlers, discovers he’s on the trail of a more dramatic abduction…
Riverhead Books

Hanna Pickard
Why do people with addiction use drugs self-destructively? Why don’t they quit out of self-concern? Why does the rat in the experiment, alone in a cage, press the lever again and again for cocaine to the point of death? In this pathbreaking book, Hanna Pickard proposes a new paradigm for understanding the puzzle of addiction. For too long, our thinking has been hostage to a false dichotomy: either addiction is a brain disease, or it is a moral failing. Pickard argues that it is neither, and that both models stifle addiction research and fail people who need help.
University Presses

Robert Dale Rogers
Explores more than 500 species of ferns, alongside full-color photos; examines the Indigenous and folk uses of ferns for food and medicine throughout history; explains in detail the scientific research behind the potency of fern chemicals to heal many human conditions. Used for millennia by Indigenous people for food and medicine, ferns are now being recognized scientifically for their unique medicinal potential against antibiotic-resistant bacteria, cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and liver, kidney, and respiratory conditions.
Bear & Company

Wouter Bijdendijk
Michelin star chef Joris Bijdendijk provides two delicious vegetarian recipes for each major plant, offering culinary delights to help you easily incorporate the medicinal powers of these plants in your life. A journey through the deep and ancient roots of plant knowledge, from folk uses to mystical properties to the vital role of plants in human evolution, this book shows you how to harness the natural power of plants to revitalize your body, integrate your spirit, and empower your life.
Healing Arts Press

Vlatko Vedral
For the last century, physics has been following the paths set out by the same two theories-quantum mechanics and general relativity. Despite these great theories being fundamentally in conflict, most scientists are simply chasing decimal points in laboratories. To give the deeper explanation of reality we seek, we need new ways to explore and critique our best ideas of the universe on the smallest and largest scales. As Vlatko Vedral argues in Portals to a New Reality, this suggests we are on the brink of a new revolution.
Penguin Books

Maria Popova
By turns epic and intimate-as concerned with the physical laws binding atoms into molecules as with the psychic forces binding us to each other-Traversal explores the universe between cells and souls to reveal the world, and our lives, in a dazzling new light. In Traversal, Maria Popova traverses the border between life and death, chance and choice, chemistry and consciousness: What makes a body a person? What makes a planet a world? How do we safeguard our love of truth from our lust for power? What slakes our longings and what redeems our losses?
Farrar, Strauss and Giroux

Andy Roberts
Historical articles on the banning of LSD in Britain and Welsh Psilocybin festivals are coupled with intimate interviews with such figures as LSD chemist Casey Hardison, Jeff Dexter, Andy Munro, and Liz Elliot. As well as being an extraordinary record of British psychedelic culture over the last sixty years, the book is a very frank account of the author’s personal experiences of LSD and the world of the counterculture.
Psychedelic Press

Jill Pflugheber and Steven F White
To pay homage to sacred plants revered by Indigenous groups throughout the Americas is a way of honoring the entire world in a time of environmental emergency. The visual contents of this book magnify life in ways that may alter how humans perceive other living entities from our shared and threatened biosphere. Some of these plants contain the most potent psychoactive agents on the planet and serve as intermediaries that have enabled Native communities to communicate with their ancestors, wage war on the enemies of their land and their traditions, conceptualize entire cosmogonies, and maintain a nearly impossible ecological equilibrium.
Papadakis

Nathaniel Altman
This wonderful book teaches us about the plant foods upon which we depend. Learn how the avocado, yam, lentil, and other foods detailed in this book migrated from their places of origin to where they can be found today, along with their mythological powers, spiritual significance, and the ancient and modern festivals held in their honour. The author discusses each plant’s nutritional and healing properties, based on the latest scientific findings on nutraceuticals and phytochemicals, to present each food as a medicine.
Healing Arts Press

Polina Rud
Offering introspective insights for the beginning of the year or at any time, the origins of Snakes and Arrows trace back to gyan caupar, or the “game of knowledge,” a spiritual board game from ancient India. Like other forms of divination, such as the I Ching and the Tarot, the game offers a playful yet profound approach to explore the self, the present, and the future as well as understand one’s destiny. The game’s ascending path mirrors spiritual evolution and guides players toward enlightenment,. Rud shows how gyan caupar symbolises the psyche’s journey.
Destiny Books

Richard Stursberg
A sweeping account of how English Canada once forged a confident literary culture―and how that culture has steadily collapsed. For decades, books provided the country’s most searching reflections on its history, politics, and identity; they shaped the national conversation and anchored a shared sense of who Canadians were. Author and media executive Richard Stursberg traces how this ecosystem emerged, flourished, and then eroded, foreign ownership, shifting cultural priorities, fragile institutions, and policy failures hollowed out the sector. Canadian voices need to be heard now, more than ever!
Sutherland House

Justin Smith-Ruiuh
On Drugs blends autobiography, intellectual history, and philosophical inquiry to explore the transformative impact of psychedelics on human consciousness and thought. Drawing on his personal experiences as ‘an articulate guinea pig,’ Smith-Ruiu argues that psychedelics upend our assumptions about the nature of reality—and thus force a reckoning with the very foundations of Western philosophy. In the late, post-lockdown days of the pandemic, grappling with personal loss and existential uncertainty, Justin Smith-Ruiu found himself standing in a California cannabis dispensary, pondering a question his tribe of fellow philosophers have often dismissed as too simple: How did I get here? Justin Smith-Ruiu is a professor of history and philosophy of science at the Université Paris Cité. The Washington Post reviewed his book in detail.
ePub

Erica RTex
The oral history of a band that came to define a generation tells the As she reflects on her tumultuous childhood marked by violent abuse from psychiatrist parents, Rex uncovers the psychological influences that shaped her life and therapeutic search. Despite years of failed conventional treatments, Rex sought alternative paths, discovering transformative healing through ayahuasca, MDMA, and 5-MeO-DMT. Seeing What Is There navigates the complexities of the psychedelic therapy movement, questioning its ethical pitfalls and motivations. Ultimately, Rex demonstrates that true healing requires more than just pharmaceuticals—it demands economic security, community, and social support, offering a powerful meditation on trauma, survival, and the potential for transformation.
She Writes Press

Robert Dickins
From obscure origins, Psilocybe mushrooms quickly and quietly established themselves in local and countercultural Britain. They became a staple rite of passage, folkloric emblem, and mischievous companion in the festival calendar. For over fifty years, these tricksters danced around the law, difficult to capture. Now, twenty years after possession of fresh magic mushrooms was made illegal, Psilocybe Pickers tells the story of how these psychedelic fungi entered British consciousness in the twentieth century, the bemushroomed Britons who took them on as part of their culture, and how the authorities tried to police them.
Psychedelic Press

usannah Fisher
How the world needs to adapt to a changing climate, and the key problems and hard choices that lie ahead for the global community
Sink or Swim explores the hard choices that lie ahead concerning how people earn a living, the way governments manage relationships between countries, and how communities accommodate the movement of people. Should people be encouraged to move away from the coast? How can global food supplies be managed when parts of the world are hit by simultaneous droughts? How can conflict be handled when there isn’t enough water?
Harper Collins

Olga Tokarczuk
A woman settles in a remote Polish village where she knows no one. It has few inhabitants, but it teems with the stories of the living and the dead. There’s the drunk Marek Marek, who discovers that he shares his body with a bird, and Franz Frost, whose nightmares come to him from a newly discovered planet. There’s the man whose death – with one leg on the Polish side, one on the Czech—was an international incident. And there are the Germans who still haunt a region that not long ago they called their own. From the founding of the town to the lives of its saints, these shards piece together not only a history, but a cosmology.
Fitzcarraldo Editions

Patti Smith
The most intimate of Smith’s memoirs, Bread of Angels takes us through Smith’s teenage years. Arthur Rimbaud and Bob Dylan emerge as creative role models as she begins to write poetry, then lyrics, ultimately merging both into iconic recordings such as Horses, Wave, and Easter. She leaves it all behind to marry her one true love, Fred Sonic Smith, living on a canal in St. Clair Shores, Michigan. The couple spend nights in their landlocked Chris-Craft studying nautical maps and charting new adventures as they start a family. A series of profound losses mark Patti’s life. Grief and gratitude are braided through years of caring for her children, rebuilding her life and, finally, writing again.
Random House

Paul McCartney, Ted Widmer
The oral history of a band that came to define a generation tells the madcap tale of Paul McCartney and his newly formed band, from their beginnings in the early 1970s to their dissolution a decade later. Drawn from over 500,000 words of interviews with McCartney, family and band members, and other key participants, Wings recounts―now with a half-century’s wisdom―the musical odyssey taken by a man searching for his identity in the aftermath of The Beatles’ breakup. Soon joined by his wife–American photographer Linda McCartney–on keyboard and vocals; drummer Denny Seiwell; and guitarist Denny Laine, McCartney sowed the seeds for a new band.
Liveright

Anthony Hopkins
Born and raised in Port Talbot—a small Welsh steelworks town—amid war and depression, Sir Anthony Hopkins grew up around men who were tough and eschewed all forms of emotional vulnerability in favour of alcoholism and brutality. A struggling student in school, he was deemed a failure with no future ahead of him. But, on a fateful Saturday night, he watched the 1948 adaptation of Hamlet, sparking a passion for acting that would lead him on a path that no one could have predicted. Sir Anthony also takes a deeply honest look at the low points in his personal life. His addiction cost him his first marriage, his relationship with his only child, and nearly his life—the latter ultimately propelling him toward sobriety.
S&S / Summit Books

Stephanie Mines
Entering the Māori worldview is like stepping into a verdant landscape where humans and plants, animals, the land, rain, and mountains are united. This is the model of living that matriarch Maata Wharehoka has been sustaining her entire life in Aotearoa (New Zealand). The Māori word manaaki means to protect, to show respect, and to take care. This is the essence of Maata Wharehoka’s wisdom. Transmitting Maata’s wisdom to the world is the task Stephanie Mines set for herself as she shares in this book Maata’s pioneering efforts in healthcare, parenting, and social justice as well as her interpretations of traditional Māori teachings.
Harper Collins

Linda Rosewood
In the early 1980s, a household of lesbian feminists establish a women-only commune in an ancient Californian redwood forest. It seems a perfect place to practice the ritual magic that helps them function harmoniously as a group – even if they aren’t all true believers. If you ever wanted to know what that entails, here’s you chance to witness first hand, how women live and love as a group, whilte practicing magic. Of course there is conflict, but there’s also warmth and a sincere desire to overcome the patriarchy. An authentic book that leads us back to a more innocent and idealistic era, A Circle Outside describes a vision of a utopian dream, where the only real magic is self-transformation.
Lightning Books

Alexandra Sheren
The novel The Echo of Ucayali is both an anthropological journey into the world of Amazonian shamans and a mystical adventure non-fiction, based on real events and told in the first person. It explores the spirits of the Amazon, the gifts and hidden perils of its sacred plants, the profound meaning of confianza and shamanic contracts, and the delicate line between light and darkness in a realm where energy is the ultimate currency. It is intended for those who embark on distant quests in search of transformation, who seek spiritual growth, and who take an interest in shamanism, depth psychology, and the cultures of indigenous peoples.Aegitas Publishing

Ellen Dee Davidson
Weaving together environmental science, wilderness adventure, goddess mythology, and the sentience of old growth redwoods, the author shows how to cultivate a sensitivity to the forest and open a channel to its wisdom. She presents simple techniques of receptivity, some from her Buddhist mindfulness practice, along with forest-bathing protocols, showing how forest bathing can calm, soothe, and heal our bodies, minds, and spirits. She also recounts her own remarkable healing after twenty years suffering from fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue.
Bear & Co

Julian Vayne
From preparing the space and setting the tone, to navigating the journey and supporting successful integration, Trip Sitting takes a holistic approach to care. With a strong foundation in ethics and practical experience this guide will help you hold space with clarity, confidence, and compassion, maximising the benefits and minimising the risks when exploring these magical medicines. With a focus primarily on one-to-one sessions, its principles and practices can be adapted to a variety of contexts, from small group settings to personal journeys.
Psychedelic Press

Harper Lee
From one of America’s most beloved authors, a posthumous collection of newly discovered short stories and previously published essays and magazine pieces, offering a fresh perspective on the remarkable literary mind of Harper Lee. It combines Lee’s early short fiction and later nonfiction in a volume covering territory from the Alabama schoolyards of Lee’s youth to the luncheonettes and movie houses of midcentury Manhattan, The Land of Sweet Forever invites still-vital conversations about politics, equality, travel, love, fiction, art, the American South, and what it means to lead an engaged and creative life.
Harper Collins

Marisa Meltzer
A vivid portrait of Birkin and her profound legacy, from her early years in 1960s London to her rise as a beloved celebrity in France, detailing personal challenges, her relationships with creative powerhouses, and the duality of her public and private selves. Based on interviews and deep archival research, Meltzer reveals the nuances of Birkin’s character: her famously tempestuous romantic relationships, life with her three famous daughters, and the creative energy that drove her. It Girl tells the story of her indelible impact on femininity and style, and how what we think of as French girl style grew from her. Far from being just a muse, Birkin is at last given her well-deserved due.
Atria Books

Andy Roberts
If you think the psychedelic revolution of the sixties and seventies happened mainly in the USA, here’s a book that proves you wrong. Not only was Timothy Leary given his first LSD by the mysterious Michael Hollingshead: Britain was a huge supplier of the queen of mind altering substances, producing blotter acid and even more microdots, distributed throughout the world. Starting with the early days, when psychedelics were sampled by artists like the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix or the Rolling Stones, Andy Roberts takes us on a colourful journey of free festival and fairs, right down to infamous busts and scientific studies. A wonderful book full of noteworthy facts. (SGS)
Psychedelic Press

Joe Dolce
The book covers the history, research, myths, and use of the most popular psychedelics including MDMA, Magic Mushrooms, Ketamine, DMT/5-MeO-DMT, Ayahuasca, LSD, Mescaline/Payote/Huachuma, and Ibogaine/Iboga. In addition, it offers essential information on how to set an intentional journey, the potential benefits of microdosing, how couples can use psychedelics to enhance intimacy and connection, and recommendations for responsible use when working with these extraordinary substances.
Black Dog & Leventhal

Marcia Glass (Ed.)
This innovative edited volume explores the use of psychedelic medicines in palliative care and addiction medicine and presents some of the most novel medications. Dr. Marcia Glass is Professor of Internal Medicine at University of California, San Francisco. She has worked internationally with Doctors without Borders, the Yale/Stanford Johnson and Johnson GH Program, Columbia, and Partners in Health. She is certified in psychedelic-assisted therapy through the Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Research.
Oxford Academic Press

Darren McGarvey
Today, trauma permeates media, from music and television to films and books – my own included. While the increasing openness is welcome, I’ve observed that this rise has been accompanied by a parallel explosion of disinformation and sometimes harmful guidance about how to deal with personal trauma. How did we get here? And are the stories we’re telling ourselves liberating us or keeping us trapped?
Penguin Books

Madeleine Beekman
Infused with cutting-edge science, sharp humour, and insights into the history of biology and its luminaries, Beekman weaves a narrative that’s both enlightening and entertaining. Challenging the traditional theories of male luminaries like Chomksy, Pinker, and Harari, she invites us into the intricate world of molecular biology and its ancient secrets. The Origin of Language is a tour de force by a brilliant biologist on how a culture of cooperation and care have shaped our existence.
Simon & Schuster

Andrija Puharich
In 1954, neurologist Andrija Puharich, M.D., receives a call from a wealthy supporter of his lab about an unusual subject worthy of further research: Harry Stone, a young sculptor with unusually acute extrasensory perception. When handed an ancient Egyptian artifact, Harry had fallen into a deep trance, drawing hieroglyphic symbols, including mushrooms, and using ancient Egyptian phrases to describe a drug that can enhance psychic abilities. This book reveals all the details of that story in this new edition of the psychedelic classic.
Park Street Press

Michael J. Winkelman (Contributor)
Handbook of Entheogenic Healing
Entheogenic Healing describes and analyses twenty contemporary indigenous traditional practices, mestizo adaptations, and recently emerging global traditions, illustrating the ritual and cultural contexts and the commonalities of these psychedelic therapeutic practices as guidelines for enhancing clinical approaches of the Psychedelic Renaissance.
Brill

Andrew Gallimore
DMT is the world’s strangest and most mysterious drug, inducing one of the most remarkable and yet least understood of all states of consciousness. This common plant molecule has, from ancient times to the modern day, been used as a tool to gain access to a bizarre alien reality of inordinate complexity and unimaginable strangeness, populated by a panoply of highly advanced, intelligent, and communicative beings entirely not of this world. The story of DMT forces us to reconsider our most basic assumptions about the nature of reality and our place within it.
St. Martin’s Press

Rhonda Pallasdowney & Sandi O’Connor
By learning to listen quietly to flowers and plants, we can tune in to the inner teachings they have to offer us. Plants can not only heal us, but they can also teach us how to live a more joyful, healthy, and balanced life. Each plant discussion also features full-color close-up photos by Rhonda PallasDowney that capture the energetic imprint and personality of the plant. Sharing the teachings they’ve received through years of attentive listening to flowers, trees, and plants, Rhonda PallasDowney and Sandi O’Connor explore how to deepen your personal experience with the world of plants and connect with their energies.
Bear & Company

Kate Moran
Clothes are much more than just what we put on in the morning. They express our identity; they can be an independent statement or the result of coercion; and they have deeply entrenched historical, political, and social aspects. Kate Moran explores the connections between clothes and philosophy, showing how clothes can illustrate and pose philosophical problems, and how philosophical ideas influence clothing. Her portrait of our clothes helps us to understand an important and underexplored aspect of our lives.
Cambridge University Press

Paul Stamets
The past decade has seen an explosion of interest in using psilocybin mushrooms for recreational and medicinal purposes. Stamet’s new book brings depth and understanding to an often-misunderstood topic. Revealing the potential of these powerful, mind-awakening fungi to help us live better, happier lives through micro- and macro-dosing, this handbook is an indispensable—and potentially lifesaving—addition to mushroom field guides from the biggest name in mycology.
Random House

Jamie Brownlee / Kevin Walby
This book locates this psychedelic renaissance in the context of corporate capture, medicalization, and the war on drugs. Wealthy entrepreneurs are investing billions in the psychedelics industry. Biotechnology firms are racing to capture intellectual property and monopolize psychedelic supply chains. Venture capitalists are leveraging the prospects of a lucrative mass market. Together, these actors are appropriating Indigenous knowledge and claiming ownership over substances that have been in the public domain for centuries.
Fernwood Publishing

Norma J. Burton / Nisha Burton
Norma and Nisha Burton map the important connection between three gateways into the psyche’s depths: lucid dreaming, shamanic drumming trance journeys, and ceremonial plant medicine journeys. With drumming-induced trance journeys, they explore the scientific effect on brainwave frequencies alongside consciousness teachings from indigenous cultures like the Sami of Norway and Huichol of Mexico. Their approach to lucid dreaming transcends basic instruction, offering sophisticated techniques to not only summon but sustain lucidity and integrate suppressed parts of oneself.
Findhorn Press

Peter J. Carroll
Carroll’s work showcases where chaos magic has come from, where it is now, and most importantly, where it is going. Helmed by one of the originators of chaos magic, Peter J. Carroll, this book is filled with essays by some of the most respected chaos magic workers who are redefining magic for the modern practitioner. Among its contents: Chaos magic meets witchcraft, Egregores, Virtual reality and cyber magic, Animist sorcery, The power of personal mythology and quantum chaos, Tarot in chaos magic, Chaos magic and neuro-hacking, Esoteric Buddhism and the eight chaos gods.
Weiser Books

Glennon Doyle / Abby Wambach / Amanda Doyle
Every day, Glennon Doyle spirals around the same questions.The harder life gets, the less likely she is to remember the answers she’s spent her life learning. She wonders: I’m almost fifty years old. I’ve overcome a hell of a lot. Why do I wake up every day having forgotten everything I know? Glennon’s compasses are her sister, Amanda, and her wife, Abby. Recently, in the span of a single year, Glennon was diagnosed with anorexia, Amanda was diagnosed with breast cancer, and Abby’s beloved brother died. They turned toward the only thing that’s ever helped them find their way: deep, honest conversations with other brave, kind, wise people.
The Dial Press

by Andrew Feldmár
Andrew Feldmár trained under R. D. Laing and worked with Stanislav Grof and Paul Watzlawick. A pioneer of psychedelic psychotherapy, he presents its history, his personal experiences, and his wishes for the future of this radical practice. His aim: to prevent its medicalization and to show that at its core is an organic relationship of two people. (Edited by Daniel Acs and Aron Buky-Tompa.)
Karnac Books

by Manvir Singh
What are the origins of shamanism and what is its future? Do shamans believe in their powers? What exactly is trance? And what can we learn from indigenous healing practices? Anthropologist Manvir Singh offers a new explanation for one of the most misunderstood religious traditions. Travelling from Indonesia to the Amazon, living with shamans and observing music, drug use and indigenous curing ceremonies, he journeys into the origins of shamanism.  
Penguin Books

by Sarah Wynn-Williams
A memoir charting one woman’s career at the heart of one of the most influential companies on the planet, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to Facebook, the decisions that have shaped world events in recent decades, and the people who made them. Sarah Wynn-Williams tells the story of Facebook, mapping its rise from stumbling encounters with juntas to Mark Zuckerberg’s reaction when he learned of Facebook’s role in Trump’s election.
Macmillan

by Ron Chernow
Before he was Mark Twain, he was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Born in 1835, he spent his childhood dreaming of piloting steamboats on the Mississippi. But when the Civil War interrupted his career on the river, the young Twain went west to the Nevada Territory and accepted a job at a local newspaper, writing dispatches that attracted attention for their brashness and humor. It wasn’t long before the former steamboat pilot from Missouri was recognized across the country for his literary brilliance, writing under a pen name that he would immortalize.
Penguin LLC

by Suleika Jaouad
From the time she was young, Suleika Jaouad has kept a journal. She’s used it to mark life’s biggest occasions and to weather its most ferocious storms. Journaling has buoyed her through illness, heartbreak, and the deepest uncertainty. And she is not alone: for so many people, keeping a journal is an essential tool for navigating both the personal peaks and valleys and the collective challenges of modern life. More than ever, we need a space for puzzling through. It’s another book the New York Times has reviewed.
Random House