One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest - Book Review

Book Review: One River by Wade Davis

Wade Davis is one of the most prolific public anthropologists of our time—a writer, scholar, and explorer whose work bridges ethnography, botany, and activism. In One River, originally published over two decades ago, Davis crafts a narrative that is equal parts travelogue, biography, adventure tale, and historical record. At the heart of this story is the life and work of Harvard ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes, whose mid-20th-century expeditions into the Amazon laid the groundwork for modern ethnobotanical research in the Amazon.

As someone drawn to rivers and their stories, I approached One River with curiosity. The title alone earned it a place on the RIVERS reading list. While the book is not solely focused on the Amazon River itself, its narrative flows through a dense tributary of journeys—both literal and intellectual—deep into the northwestern Amazon basin. Davis retraces Schultes’ footsteps some 40 years later, weaving his own experiences with those of his mentor, drawing readers into a wild, tangled world of psychedelic plants, colonial history, and cultural reverence for the indigenous tribes of the Amazon.

A standout passage captures the spirit of this layered geography:

"The region he entered (Schultes), the Northwest Amazon of Colombia, was and remains the wildest place in South America. The Amazon has fifty thousand miles of navigable river and one thousand major tributaries... The Amazonian lowlands of Colombia, by contrast, contain only one major navigable river, the Putumayo; all others are interrupted by rapids and waterfalls.” (p.180)

Reflections

Over the past five years, I’ve found myself repeatedly returning to Davis’s work, not just for its storytelling but for its underlying ethic: a commitment to preserving human and ecological diversity. His writing gave me language for what I was seeing and feeling as a young paddler and filmmaker exploring river systems under threat—especially in places where globalization erodes Indigenous knowledge, language, and land.

Yet, rereading One River today—particularly against the backdrop of climate crisis and accelerating destruction in the Amazon—brings a new layer of critique. At times, the narrative lacks the urgency of the planetary moment we’re now living in. The romantic lens through which Schultes’ travels are viewed—deep in uncontacted territories and sacred headwaters—can feel outdated, especially when the contemporary Amazon is marked not just by mystery, but by resistance and resilience in the face of extractive violence.

Room for Improvement
A contemporary edition of One River might benefit from a new foreword or afterword—contextualizing the work for younger readers who come to it from within movements for climate justice, decolonization, and Indigenous rights. The ecological and political stakes have shifted dramatically since the book’s publication.

Final Thoughts
One River is an epic. It’s a book that invites readers to see rivers as more than water. For anyone working in or alongside river systems in the Amazon, the text is of interest, even if it occasionally needs to be read with a critical lens.

Reviewed by William Henkel for RIVERS