Excellent life story of an (apparently 🤷🏻) influential figure in ethnobotany. Everything Quave says checks out wrt the corruption and failures of the medical industry from my amateur bio-literate mind. Her life-long quest to shine light on the immense depth of plant chemistry for the good of humanity is inspiring, and I am grateful for her work and the context this book elucidates.
Reviews and Comments
Nonfiction audio is my main thing. Autobiographies, parenting, science, social issues, and some business or anything educational.
I consider nonfiction to be a healthier and more useful view of the world than the news.
I have a few Mastodon accounts, like @travisfw@fosstodon.org
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Travis F W finished reading Plant Hunter by Cassandra Leah Quave
Travis F W wants to read No Rules Rules by Reed Hastings
necessary reading if I'm going to develop an #ArtificialExecutive
Travis F W commented on When You Wonder, You're Learning by Gregg Behr
Although I somehow expected to get more out of the book that I could use as a father of two young kids, I did learn a lot about Rogers' life and associations, and some of the interesting tangential happenings in Pittsburgh. Also, the big takeaway was to encourage and engage the kids in unstructured creative play. Although I already was aware of the reasons, the importance of doing so is worth taking time to consider.
Travis F W rated When You Wonder, You're Learning: 4 stars
Travis F W finished reading When You Wonder, You're Learning by Gregg Behr
Travis F W finished reading High Conflict by Amanda Ripley
Travis F W finished reading How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan
Good journalistic history of psychedelics. Highly relatable. Approached from a modern perspective, walking the tightrope psychedelics walk between science and the metaphysics of subjective experience, including religious experience, consciousness expansion, and the nature of reality, without losing the audience. Though it's been a few years since it was published, How to Change Your Mind was well worth my ten hours (not that my audio book player is on 1x speed, actually).
Travis F W started reading How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan
Seemed like a prerequisite to another book, and, halfway through, now, I am not regretting getting into the history of psychedelics, the revival of the science (as of 2018), the reasons for the conflicts in culture and scientific methods, and more. I really appreciate Michael Pollan's balanced approach, exploring all the different perspectives without disparaging any group nor individual.
Travis F W stopped reading Weathering by Arline T. Geronimus
Geronimus is highly quotable, very thorough, and her insights are critically important for the medical community, public health, government policy, and progressive culture. I learned a lot, and I only got halfway through. Maybe I will finish it, but if the length of the book is at all daunting to you, know that every chapter is worth it, and even if you follow my lead and stop halfway through, I still recommend the first half of the book wholeheartedly.
Travis F W rated Four Thousand Weeks: 5 stars

Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
The average human lifespan is absurdly, outrageously, insultingly brief: if you live to 80, you have about four thousand weeks …