For half a century, readers on peyotism have devoured La Barre s fascinating original study, which began when the author, at age twenty-four, studied the rites of fifteen American Indian tribes using "Lophophora williamsii," the small, spineless, carrot-shaped peyote cactus growing in the Rio Grande Valley and southward.Continuing his research from the 1930s through the 1980s, Weston La Barre reviews topics such as the Timothy Leary-Richard Alpert experiments with peyote and other psychotropic substances, the Carlos Castaneda phenomenon, the progress of the Native American Church toward acceptance as a religious denomination, the presumptions of the Neo-American Church, the legal ramifications of ritual drug use, and the spread of peyotism from the Southwest to other North American tribes.This new edition of La Barre s classic study includes 334 new entries in the latest of his highly valued bibliographical essays on works relating to peyote, not just in anthropology but in a variety of fields including archeology, economics, botany, chemistry, and pharmacology. The bibliography lists important contributions in popular media such as newspapers, audiotapes, and films, as well as in scholarly journals.
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