Oddly Unsatisfying, 24 May 2007
John Emsley is one of my favourite science writers and I came to this tome with high hopes of being thoroughly entertained, but finished it with a vague sense of disappointment

Entitled « Elements of Murder » the book actually only considers the malicious use of five _ mercury, lead, arsenic, thallium and antimony. Unhappily for Emsley (and even more unhappily for the recipient), the alleged use of polonium as a poison post dates this work, or the variety could have been improved.

The science bits of the book (how and why these things are so darned nasty) is superbly written, as are the sections of what can only be called trivia - the speculations the both Mozart and Napoleon met their ends as the result of ingesting, either by accident or design, toxic metals. Where the book fails to deliver is in the description of some famous proved cases of murder by poisoning, such as those carried out by George Chapman. Emsley is a talented science writer, not a teller of juicy scandal and by the time the last couple of murders are reached, the tales are getting a little repetitive.

Buy the book for well written popular science and you will not be disappointed: buy it for the history of crime and I think you might feel short changed.


Just what the Doctor ordered., 08 Feb 2007
I really enjoyed reading this book. It struck an excellent balance between scientific insight and salacious gossip. What a combination!

I was reading this in my hospital bed needing something demanding enough to save me from terminal boredom, but that I could pick up in short bursts. Just what the Doctor ordered.

A Cheap 'Cut and Paste' Effort. , 27 Nov 2006
The concept of the book is clever: it takes the main heavy metal elements and discusses their uses and misuses, in respect of murder.
The result, however, is disappointing. It appears to have been written across a weekend by taking a few very basis facts and then pasting in chunks of `off the shelf' (often rambling) criminal biography.
Considering Emsley is a scientist most parts of the book are so un-scientific to be exasperating. I quote just two examples: in respect of the possibility of lead ingestion being the cause of gout (in the 1800's) `there is no reason why this could (cause gout) but it does' (!). Equally the madness of King George III he attributes to lead (despite a mass of contrary research on this subject - which he fails to quote), `because he was fond of lemonade and sauerkraut' (allegedly high in lead).
Readable, but a really cheap `put-together'. Mr Emsley, please spend a little more time

It didn't meet my expectations., 03 Sep 2006
This book was promising. My advice would be to read the introduction which is well written and interesting and ignore the rest of it. Everything that followed the introduction was of such a poor quality that I could not believe the author of the introduction to be the same as for the main body of the book. For reasons best known to the author there were digressions into vitriolic judgements on the sexual proclivities of King Charles and some quite unsustainable remarks about Isaac Newton. What a shame! I was really looking forward to this book, and whereas the introduction had some very nicely written paragraphs the main body of the book was in ungainly prose. I didn't read much beyond the third chapter -perhaps it improved.
For something much more worthwhile read Poisons: From Hemlock to Botox and the Killer Bean of Calabar by Peter Macinnins.

Oddly Unsatisfying, 24 May 2007
John Emsley is one of my favourite science writers and I came to this tome with high hopes of being thoroughly entertained, but finished it with a vague sense of disappointment

Entitled « Elements of Murder » the book actually only considers the malicious use of five _ mercury, lead, arsenic, thallium and antimony. Unhappily for Emsley (and even more unhappily for the recipient), the alleged use of polonium as a poison post dates this work, or the variety could have been improved.

The science bits of the book (how and why these things are so darned nasty) is superbly written, as are the sections of what can only be called trivia - the speculations the both Mozart and Napoleon met their ends as the result of ingesting, either by accident or design, toxic metals. Where the book fails to deliver is in the description of some famous proved cases of murder by poisoning, such as those carried out by George Chapman. Emsley is a talented science writer, not a teller of juicy scandal and by the time the last couple of murders are reached, the tales are getting a little repetitive.

Buy the book for well written popular science and you will not be disappointed: buy it for the history of crime and I think you might feel short changed.


Just what the Doctor ordered., 08 Feb 2007
I really enjoyed reading this book. It struck an excellent balance between scientific insight and salacious gossip. What a combination!

I was reading this in my hospital bed needing something demanding enough to save me from terminal boredom, but that I could pick up in short bursts. Just what the Doctor ordered.

A Cheap 'Cut and Paste' Effort. , 27 Nov 2006
The concept of the book is clever: it takes the main heavy metal elements and discusses their uses and misuses, in respect of murder.
The result, however, is disappointing. It appears to have been written across a weekend by taking a few very basis facts and then pasting in chunks of `off the shelf' (often rambling) criminal biography.
Considering Emsley is a scientist most parts of the book are so un-scientific to be exasperating. I quote just two examples: in respect of the possibility of lead ingestion being the cause of gout (in the 1800's) `there is no reason why this could (cause gout) but it does' (!). Equally the madness of King George III he attributes to lead (despite a mass of contrary research on this subject - which he fails to quote), `because he was fond of lemonade and sauerkraut' (allegedly high in lead).
Readable, but a really cheap `put-together'. Mr Emsley, please spend a little more time

It didn't meet my expectations., 03 Sep 2006
This book was promising. My advice would be to read the introduction which is well written and interesting and ignore the rest of it. Everything that followed the introduction was of such a poor quality that I could not believe the author of the introduction to be the same as for the main body of the book. For reasons best known to the author there were digressions into vitriolic judgements on the sexual proclivities of King Charles and some quite unsustainable remarks about Isaac Newton. What a shame! I was really looking forward to this book, and whereas the introduction had some very nicely written paragraphs the main body of the book was in ungainly prose. I didn't read much beyond the third chapter -perhaps it improved.
For something much more worthwhile read Poisons: From Hemlock to Botox and the Killer Bean of Calabar by Peter Macinnins.

Clear explanations, well written, an excellent textbook., 24 Nov 2000
Of all the books I have bought for use as a reference in my work, this is the best purchase I have made to date. The text covers many forms of pollutants, how they get in to the environment, what happens to them when they get there, how they disperse, and their effects on each other, on individual organisms, populations and communities. The writing is clear and concise and very easy to understand, covering all the important classes of pollutants. Many books are needlessly bogged down with weighty details and cumbersome explanations, or with poorly explained diagrams which seem to bear little or no relevance to the text. This book is quite the opposite. However although it is essentially an outline text, I feel that some topics could have had more explanation, eg. Cytochrome P450 and endocrine disruptors - though perhaps these are the remit of more in-depth biochemistry texts. Purely from a practical point of view, this book is an excellent reference for research, study and practice of many aspects of environmental science.

Oddly Unsatisfying, 24 May 2007
John Emsley is one of my favourite science writers and I came to this tome with high hopes of being thoroughly entertained, but finished it with a vague sense of disappointment

Entitled « Elements of Murder » the book actually only considers the malicious use of five _ mercury, lead, arsenic, thallium and antimony. Unhappily for Emsley (and even more unhappily for the recipient), the alleged use of polonium as a poison post dates this work, or the variety could have been improved.

The science bits of the book (how and why these things are so darned nasty) is superbly written, as are the sections of what can only be called trivia - the speculations the both Mozart and Napoleon met their ends as the result of ingesting, either by accident or design, toxic metals. Where the book fails to deliver is in the description of some famous proved cases of murder by poisoning, such as those carried out by George Chapman. Emsley is a talented science writer, not a teller of juicy scandal and by the time the last couple of murders are reached, the tales are getting a little repetitive.

Buy the book for well written popular science and you will not be disappointed: buy it for the history of crime and I think you might feel short changed.


Just what the Doctor ordered., 08 Feb 2007
I really enjoyed reading this book. It struck an excellent balance between scientific insight and salacious gossip. What a combination!

I was reading this in my hospital bed needing something demanding enough to save me from terminal boredom, but that I could pick up in short bursts. Just what the Doctor ordered.

A Cheap 'Cut and Paste' Effort. , 27 Nov 2006
The concept of the book is clever: it takes the main heavy metal elements and discusses their uses and misuses, in respect of murder.
The result, however, is disappointing. It appears to have been written across a weekend by taking a few very basis facts and then pasting in chunks of `off the shelf' (often rambling) criminal biography.
Considering Emsley is a scientist most parts of the book are so un-scientific to be exasperating. I quote just two examples: in respect of the possibility of lead ingestion being the cause of gout (in the 1800's) `there is no reason why this could (cause gout) but it does' (!). Equally the madness of King George III he attributes to lead (despite a mass of contrary research on this subject - which he fails to quote), `because he was fond of lemonade and sauerkraut' (allegedly high in lead).
Readable, but a really cheap `put-together'. Mr Emsley, please spend a little more time

It didn't meet my expectations., 03 Sep 2006
This book was promising. My advice would be to read the introduction which is well written and interesting and ignore the rest of it. Everything that followed the introduction was of such a poor quality that I could not believe the author of the introduction to be the same as for the main body of the book. For reasons best known to the author there were digressions into vitriolic judgements on the sexual proclivities of King Charles and some quite unsustainable remarks about Isaac Newton. What a shame! I was really looking forward to this book, and whereas the introduction had some very nicely written paragraphs the main body of the book was in ungainly prose. I didn't read much beyond the third chapter -perhaps it improved.
For something much more worthwhile read Poisons: From Hemlock to Botox and the Killer Bean of Calabar by Peter Macinnins.

Clear explanations, well written, an excellent textbook., 24 Nov 2000
Of all the books I have bought for use as a reference in my work, this is the best purchase I have made to date. The text covers many forms of pollutants, how they get in to the environment, what happens to them when they get there, how they disperse, and their effects on each other, on individual organisms, populations and communities. The writing is clear and concise and very easy to understand, covering all the important classes of pollutants. Many books are needlessly bogged down with weighty details and cumbersome explanations, or with poorly explained diagrams which seem to bear little or no relevance to the text. This book is quite the opposite. However although it is essentially an outline text, I feel that some topics could have had more explanation, eg. Cytochrome P450 and endocrine disruptors - though perhaps these are the remit of more in-depth biochemistry texts. Purely from a practical point of view, this book is an excellent reference for research, study and practice of many aspects of environmental science.

Bad art, 08 Jan 2009
Ludwig Wittgenstein used to say that thoughts die the moment they are embodied by words ...This is even more true when we try to describe the experiences brought on by magic mushrooms and ayahuasca . Unless you possess the writing ability of Plato; coupled with a Shakespearean power of imagery, then the experiences you want to describe can turn into gobbledygook!!

Thus psychedelic experiences are easily ridiculed when downloaded into language. And downloaded into tasteless language they should be ridiculed. In this age of gurus and seers you run the risk of your ideas being bracketed in the new-age section alongside UFOs, Crystal Gazing and Scientology!

Fortunately Benny Shanon just about avoids this pitfall.

He is claiming that the ayahuasca experience is not another weird cult. Its real! Ayahuasca is a doorway to another modality that exists independent of our thoughts and feelings about it. More like shifting fantasy land than good old positivist rock n roll.

Sounds very nice. But ideas like these seem so crazy to our world of television and sport. But why not? Why should 500 years of scientific materialism have all the fun?

But there is a paradox which Mr Shanon doesn't seem to be aware of. This is the paradox between language and thought. The paradox is that you cannot see what another mind is trying to described! This is not at first obvious.

So if a person is raving on about psychedelic elf machines from the fractal void, we only have his word for it. Even if he is the most artuculate person or best writer imaginable; the word is never the thing. It amazes me how naive we are about the limits of language. This applies especially when describing drug induced trips.

So how do we get to the meat of this mystery? How do we demonstrate the validity of these phenomena to those who will never step outside the culturally sanctioned playpen?

One way is the written word approach and the other is via computer technology.

The bench test will be to design software that can model virtual worlds. A multifaceted simulation of a DMT flash. Computer generated vistas of psychedelic space-time. The pictures in this book give a glimpse of what can be done with a mouse and little imagination.

Alas, I wasn't converted. The Ayahuasca art included in this book, and indeed all over the internet look lovely, but they don't mirror alien phenomena to me. They only give a glimpse of a future technological art paradigm. They are the swine before the pearls!

Its sad that innovative artwork, facilitated by ayahuasca, boils down to weird reptilian humanoids, fractal geometry and spaceships orbiting planets etc. The artwork is very pretty. But art created by experienced psychonauts should posses boundary dissolving properties that 'normal' artists cannot possibly match.

This is why, to my mind, ayahuasca art doesn't come close to say a Hieronymus Bosch or a Salvador Dali in weirdness. Bosch and Dali had something boundary dissolving about their creations. They resembled mad men trying to communicate something only they could see.

I doubt whether Hieronymus Bosch or Salvador Dali had access to magic mushrooms of ayahuasca. So whats going on? This is just my personal bias though. What do others think?

P.S. Try downloading audio lectures by Terence Mckenna or 'YouTube' the man instead. Mckenna was famous for his oratory skills so he's a good place to start if you want clues to the experiences described in this book.


A landmark of research on altered states, 01 Apr 2003
This is one of the most compelling books on altered states I’ve read, up there with James’s Varieties of Religious Experience, Huxley’s Doors of Perception (to which Shanon’s title alludes) and PIHKAL and TIKHAL by Ann and Alexander Shulgin. Unlike, say, the psychedelic performance artist Terence McKenna (whose writings I enjoy), Shanon’s authorial persona is earnest, serious, straightforward, absolutely trustworthy. He is a true scientist, dedicated to precise reporting and careful analysis rather than to entertainment. Not that his book is dull. Far from it. Antipodes is suffused with a sense of genuine adventure, of a kind that has virtually vanished from modern science. Plunging into the depths of his own ayahuasca-intoxicated mind, Shanon resembles one of the great Victorian explorers trekking into uncharted wilds, maintaining his equilibrium and wits even in the face of the most fantastical sights. Like Darwin on the voyage of the Beagle, Shanon is concerned primarily with collecting and categorizing data rather than theorizing. At the end of his book, however, he ponders his and others’ experiences and draws some tentative conclusions. Ayahuasca, he asserts, can be both truth-revealing and "the worst of liars." Shanon remains skeptical of the occult claims often made for the drug—that it puts us in touch with spirits, makes us clairvoyant, lets us leave our bodies and travel astrally. He suggests that ayahuasca visions are products of the imagination rather than glimpses of a supernatural realm existing in parallel to our own. This proposal will sound reductionistic to some, but it is actually quite provocative, and raises many questions requiring further consideration. Why does the imagination, when stimulated by ayahuasca, yield visions so much stranger and more powerful than those we encounter in, say, ordinary dreams? Why do ayahuasca-drinkers from widely disparate cultures so often hallucinate similar phenomena, such as jaguars and snakes, or palaces and royalty? Why are the visions of even an atheist like Shanon so often laden with religious significance? Antipodes will no doubt be eagerly seized upon by the psychedelic intelligentsia. But it deserves to be read by anyone interested in religion, mysticism, and consciousness--and who is not? It should be required reading for psychologists, psychiatrists, and neuroscientists, because it shows how absurdly simplistic are the biochemical, Darwinian, and genetic models now dominating mind-science. Inner space, Shanon reminds us, truly is the last great frontier of science, and its reaches are vast and wild and strange.

Oddly Unsatisfying, 24 May 2007
John Emsley is one of my favourite science writers and I came to this tome with high hopes of being thoroughly entertained, but finished it with a vague sense of disappointment

Entitled « Elements of Murder » the book actually only considers the malicious use of five _ mercury, lead, arsenic, thallium and antimony. Unhappily for Emsley (and even more unhappily for the recipient), the alleged use of polonium as a poison post dates this work, or the variety could have been improved.

The science bits of the book (how and why these things are so darned nasty) is superbly written, as are the sections of what can only be called trivia - the speculations the both Mozart and Napoleon met their ends as the result of ingesting, either by accident or design, toxic metals. Where the book fails to deliver is in the description of some famous proved cases of murder by poisoning, such as those carried out by George Chapman. Emsley is a talented science writer, not a teller of juicy scandal and by the time the last couple of murders are reached, the tales are getting a little repetitive.

Buy the book for well written popular science and you will not be disappointed: buy it for the history of crime and I think you might feel short changed.


Just what the Doctor ordered., 08 Feb 2007
I really enjoyed reading this book. It struck an excellent balance between scientific insight and salacious gossip. What a combination!

I was reading this in my hospital bed needing something demanding enough to save me from terminal boredom, but that I could pick up in short bursts. Just what the Doctor ordered.

A Cheap 'Cut and Paste' Effort. , 27 Nov 2006
The concept of the book is clever: it takes the main heavy metal elements and discusses their uses and misuses, in respect of murder.
The result, however, is disappointing. It appears to have been written across a weekend by taking a few very basis facts and then pasting in chunks of `off the shelf' (often rambling) criminal biography.
Considering Emsley is a scientist most parts of the book are so un-scientific to be exasperating. I quote just two examples: in respect of the possibility of lead ingestion being the cause of gout (in the 1800's) `there is no reason why this could (cause gout) but it does' (!). Equally the madness of King George III he attributes to lead (despite a mass of contrary research on this subject - which he fails to quote), `because he was fond of lemonade and sauerkraut' (allegedly high in lead).
Readable, but a really cheap `put-together'. Mr Emsley, please spend a little more time

It didn't meet my expectations., 03 Sep 2006
This book was promising. My advice would be to read the introduction which is well written and interesting and ignore the rest of it. Everything that followed the introduction was of such a poor quality that I could not believe the author of the introduction to be the same as for the main body of the book. For reasons best known to the author there were digressions into vitriolic judgements on the sexual proclivities of King Charles and some quite unsustainable remarks about Isaac Newton. What a shame! I was really looking forward to this book, and whereas the introduction had some very nicely written paragraphs the main body of the book was in ungainly prose. I didn't read much beyond the third chapter -perhaps it improved.
For something much more worthwhile read Poisons: From Hemlock to Botox and the Killer Bean of Calabar by Peter Macinnins.

Clear explanations, well written, an excellent textbook., 24 Nov 2000
Of all the books I have bought for use as a reference in my work, this is the best purchase I have made to date. The text covers many forms of pollutants, how they get in to the environment, what happens to them when they get there, how they disperse, and their effects on each other, on individual organisms, populations and communities. The writing is clear and concise and very easy to understand, covering all the important classes of pollutants. Many books are needlessly bogged down with weighty details and cumbersome explanations, or with poorly explained diagrams which seem to bear little or no relevance to the text. This book is quite the opposite. However although it is essentially an outline text, I feel that some topics could have had more explanation, eg. Cytochrome P450 and endocrine disruptors - though perhaps these are the remit of more in-depth biochemistry texts. Purely from a practical point of view, this book is an excellent reference for research, study and practice of many aspects of environmental science.

Bad art, 08 Jan 2009
Ludwig Wittgenstein used to say that thoughts die the moment they are embodied by words ...This is even more true when we try to describe the experiences brought on by magic mushrooms and ayahuasca . Unless you possess the writing ability of Plato; coupled with a Shakespearean power of imagery, then the experiences you want to describe can turn into gobbledygook!!

Thus psychedelic experiences are easily ridiculed when downloaded into language. And downloaded into tasteless language they should be ridiculed. In this age of gurus and seers you run the risk of your ideas being bracketed in the new-age section alongside UFOs, Crystal Gazing and Scientology!

Fortunately Benny Shanon just about avoids this pitfall.

He is claiming that the ayahuasca experience is not another weird cult. Its real! Ayahuasca is a doorway to another modality that exists independent of our thoughts and feelings about it. More like shifting fantasy land than good old positivist rock n roll.

Sounds very nice. But ideas like these seem so crazy to our world of television and sport. But why not? Why should 500 years of scientific materialism have all the fun?

But there is a paradox which Mr Shanon doesn't seem to be aware of. This is the paradox between language and thought. The paradox is that you cannot see what another mind is trying to described! This is not at first obvious.

So if a person is raving on about psychedelic elf machines from the fractal void, we only have his word for it. Even if he is the most artuculate person or best writer imaginable; the word is never the thing. It amazes me how naive we are about the limits of language. This applies especially when describing drug induced trips.

So how do we get to the meat of this mystery? How do we demonstrate the validity of these phenomena to those who will never step outside the culturally sanctioned playpen?

One way is the written word approach and the other is via computer technology.

The bench test will be to design software that can model virtual worlds. A multifaceted simulation of a DMT flash. Computer generated vistas of psychedelic space-time. The pictures in this book give a glimpse of what can be done with a mouse and little imagination.

Alas, I wasn't converted. The Ayahuasca art included in this book, and indeed all over the internet look lovely, but they don't mirror alien phenomena to me. They only give a glimpse of a future technological art paradigm. They are the swine before the pearls!

Its sad that innovative artwork, facilitated by ayahuasca, boils down to weird reptilian humanoids, fractal geometry and spaceships orbiting planets etc. The artwork is very pretty. But art created by experienced psychonauts should posses boundary dissolving properties that 'normal' artists cannot possibly match.

This is why, to my mind, ayahuasca art doesn't come close to say a Hieronymus Bosch or a Salvador Dali in weirdness. Bosch and Dali had something boundary dissolving about their creations. They resembled mad men trying to communicate something only they could see.

I doubt whether Hieronymus Bosch or Salvador Dali had access to magic mushrooms of ayahuasca. So whats going on? This is just my personal bias though. What do others think?

P.S. Try downloading audio lectures by Terence Mckenna or 'YouTube' the man instead. Mckenna was famous for his oratory skills so he's a good place to start if you want clues to the experiences described in this book.


A landmark of research on altered states, 01 Apr 2003
This is one of the most compelling books on altered states I’ve read, up there with James’s Varieties of Religious Experience, Huxley’s Doors of Perception (to which Shanon’s title alludes) and PIHKAL and TIKHAL by Ann and Alexander Shulgin. Unlike, say, the psychedelic performance artist Terence McKenna (whose writings I enjoy), Shanon’s authorial persona is earnest, serious, straightforward, absolutely trustworthy. He is a true scientist, dedicated to precise reporting and careful analysis rather than to entertainment. Not that his book is dull. Far from it. Antipodes is suffused with a sense of genuine adventure, of a kind that has virtually vanished from modern science. Plunging into the depths of his own ayahuasca-intoxicated mind, Shanon resembles one of the great Victorian explorers trekking into uncharted wilds, maintaining his equilibrium and wits even in the face of the most fantastical sights. Like Darwin on the voyage of the Beagle, Shanon is concerned primarily with collecting and categorizing data rather than theorizing. At the end of his book, however, he ponders his and others’ experiences and draws some tentative conclusions. Ayahuasca, he asserts, can be both truth-revealing and "the worst of liars." Shanon remains skeptical of the occult claims often made for the drug—that it puts us in touch with spirits, makes us clairvoyant, lets us leave our bodies and travel astrally. He suggests that ayahuasca visions are products of the imagination rather than glimpses of a supernatural realm existing in parallel to our own. This proposal will sound reductionistic to some, but it is actually quite provocative, and raises many questions requiring further consideration. Why does the imagination, when stimulated by ayahuasca, yield visions so much stranger and more powerful than those we encounter in, say, ordinary dreams? Why do ayahuasca-drinkers from widely disparate cultures so often hallucinate similar phenomena, such as jaguars and snakes, or palaces and royalty? Why are the visions of even an atheist like Shanon so often laden with religious significance? Antipodes will no doubt be eagerly seized upon by the psychedelic intelligentsia. But it deserves to be read by anyone interested in religion, mysticism, and consciousness--and who is not? It should be required reading for psychologists, psychiatrists, and neuroscientists, because it shows how absurdly simplistic are the biochemical, Darwinian, and genetic models now dominating mind-science. Inner space, Shanon reminds us, truly is the last great frontier of science, and its reaches are vast and wild and strange.

Excellent, but heavy to digest, 10 Feb 2000
Excellent book concerning quantitative describtion of microbial systems and fermentor design in particular. Mathematical oriented book, that uses linear algebra as well as differential equations to solve the systems.

Oddly Unsatisfying, 24 May 2007
John Emsley is one of my favourite science writers and I came to this tome with high hopes of being thoroughly entertained, but finished it with a vague sense of disappointment

Entitled « Elements of Murder » the book actually only considers the malicious use of five _ mercury, lead, arsenic, thallium and antimony. Unhappily for Emsley (and even more unhappily for the recipient), the alleged use of polonium as a poison post dates this work, or the variety could have been improved.

The science bits of the book (how and why these things are so darned nasty) is superbly written, as are the sections of what can only be called trivia - the speculations the both Mozart and Napoleon met their ends as the result of ingesting, either by accident or design, toxic metals. Where the book fails to deliver is in the description of some famous proved cases of murder by poisoning, such as those carried out by George Chapman. Emsley is a talented science writer, not a teller of juicy scandal and by the time the last couple of murders are reached, the tales are getting a little repetitive.

Buy the book for well written popular science and you will not be disappointed: buy it for the history of crime and I think you might feel short changed.


Just what the Doctor ordered., 08 Feb 2007
I really enjoyed reading this book. It struck an excellent balance between scientific insight and salacious gossip. What a combination!

I was reading this in my hospital bed needing something demanding enough to save me from terminal boredom, but that I could pick up in short bursts. Just what the Doctor ordered.

A Cheap 'Cut and Paste' Effort. , 27 Nov 2006
The concept of the book is clever: it takes the main heavy metal elements and discusses their uses and misuses, in respect of murder.
The result, however, is disappointing. It appears to have been written across a weekend by taking a few very basis facts and then pasting in chunks of `off the shelf' (often rambling) criminal biography.
Considering Emsley is a scientist most parts of the book are so un-scientific to be exasperating. I quote just two examples: in respect of the possibility of lead ingestion being the cause of gout (in the 1800's) `there is no reason why this could (cause gout) but it does' (!). Equally the madness of King George III he attributes to lead (despite a mass of contrary research on this subject - which he fails to quote), `because he was fond of lemonade and sauerkraut' (allegedly high in lead).
Readable, but a really cheap `put-together'. Mr Emsley, please spend a little more time

It didn't meet my expectations., 03 Sep 2006
This book was promising. My advice would be to read the introduction which is well written and interesting and ignore the rest of it. Everything that followed the introduction was of such a poor quality that I could not believe the author of the introduction to be the same as for the main body of the book. For reasons best known to the author there were digressions into vitriolic judgements on the sexual proclivities of King Charles and some quite unsustainable remarks about Isaac Newton. What a shame! I was really looking forward to this book, and whereas the introduction had some very nicely written paragraphs the main body of the book was in ungainly prose. I didn't read much beyond the third chapter -perhaps it improved.
For something much more worthwhile read Poisons: From Hemlock to Botox and the Killer Bean of Calabar by Peter Macinnins.

Clear explanations, well written, an excellent textbook., 24 Nov 2000
Of all the books I have bought for use as a reference in my work, this is the best purchase I have made to date. The text covers many forms of pollutants, how they get in to the environment, what happens to them when they get there, how they disperse, and their effects on each other, on individual organisms, populations and communities. The writing is clear and concise and very easy to understand, covering all the important classes of pollutants. Many books are needlessly bogged down with weighty details and cumbersome explanations, or with poorly explained diagrams which seem to bear little or no relevance to the text. This book is quite the opposite. However although it is essentially an outline text, I feel that some topics could have had more explanation, eg. Cytochrome P450 and endocrine disruptors - though perhaps these are the remit of more in-depth biochemistry texts. Purely from a practical point of view, this book is an excellent reference for research, study and practice of many aspects of environmental science.

Bad art, 08 Jan 2009
Ludwig Wittgenstein used to say that thoughts die the moment they are embodied by words ...This is even more true when we try to describe the experiences brought on by magic mushrooms and ayahuasca . Unless you possess the writing ability of Plato; coupled with a Shakespearean power of imagery, then the experiences you want to describe can turn into gobbledygook!!

Thus psychedelic experiences are easily ridiculed when downloaded into language. And downloaded into tasteless language they should be ridiculed. In this age of gurus and seers you run the risk of your ideas being bracketed in the new-age section alongside UFOs, Crystal Gazing and Scientology!

Fortunately Benny Shanon just about avoids this pitfall.

He is claiming that the ayahuasca experience is not another weird cult. Its real! Ayahuasca is a doorway to another modality that exists independent of our thoughts and feelings about it. More like shifting fantasy land than good old positivist rock n roll.

Sounds very nice. But ideas like these seem so crazy to our world of television and sport. But why not? Why should 500 years of scientific materialism have all the fun?

But there is a paradox which Mr Shanon doesn't seem to be aware of. This is the paradox between language and thought. The paradox is that you cannot see what another mind is trying to described! This is not at first obvious.

So if a person is raving on about psychedelic elf machines from the fractal void, we only have his word for it. Even if he is the most artuculate person or best writer imaginable; the word is never the thing. It amazes me how naive we are about the limits of language. This applies especially when describing drug induced trips.

So how do we get to the meat of this mystery? How do we demonstrate the validity of these phenomena to those who will never step outside the culturally sanctioned playpen?

One way is the written word approach and the other is via computer technology.

The bench test will be to design software that can model virtual worlds. A multifaceted simulation of a DMT flash. Computer generated vistas of psychedelic space-time. The pictures in this book give a glimpse of what can be done with a mouse and little imagination.

Alas, I wasn't converted. The Ayahuasca art included in this book, and indeed all over the internet look lovely, but they don't mirror alien phenomena to me. They only give a glimpse of a future technological art paradigm. They are the swine before the pearls!

Its sad that innovative artwork, facilitated by ayahuasca, boils down to weird reptilian humanoids, fractal geometry and spaceships orbiting planets etc. The artwork is very pretty. But art created by experienced psychonauts should posses boundary dissolving properties that 'normal' artists cannot possibly match.

This is why, to my mind, ayahuasca art doesn't come close to say a Hieronymus Bosch or a Salvador Dali in weirdness. Bosch and Dali had something boundary dissolving about their creations. They resembled mad men trying to communicate something only they could see.

I doubt whether Hieronymus Bosch or Salvador Dali had access to magic mushrooms of ayahuasca. So whats going on? This is just my personal bias though. What do others think?

P.S. Try downloading audio lectures by Terence Mckenna or 'YouTube' the man instead. Mckenna was famous for his oratory skills so he's a good place to start if you want clues to the experiences described in this book.


A landmark of research on altered states, 01 Apr 2003
This is one of the most compelling books on altered states I’ve read, up there with James’s Varieties of Religious Experience, Huxley’s Doors of Perception (to which Shanon’s title alludes) and PIHKAL and TIKHAL by Ann and Alexander Shulgin. Unlike, say, the psychedelic performance artist Terence McKenna (whose writings I enjoy), Shanon’s authorial persona is earnest, serious, straightforward, absolutely trustworthy. He is a true scientist, dedicated to precise reporting and careful analysis rather than to entertainment. Not that his book is dull. Far from it. Antipodes is suffused with a sense of genuine adventure, of a kind that has virtually vanished from modern science. Plunging into the depths of his own ayahuasca-intoxicated mind, Shanon resembles one of the great Victorian explorers trekking into uncharted wilds, maintaining his equilibrium and wits even in the face of the most fantastical sights. Like Darwin on the voyage of the Beagle, Shanon is concerned primarily with collecting and categorizing data rather than theorizing. At the end of his book, however, he ponders his and others’ experiences and draws some tentative conclusions. Ayahuasca, he asserts, can be both truth-revealing and "the worst of liars." Shanon remains skeptical of the occult claims often made for the drug—that it puts us in touch with spirits, makes us clairvoyant, lets us leave our bodies and travel astrally. He suggests that ayahuasca visions are products of the imagination rather than glimpses of a supernatural realm existing in parallel to our own. This proposal will sound reductionistic to some, but it is actually quite provocative, and raises many questions requiring further consideration. Why does the imagination, when stimulated by ayahuasca, yield visions so much stranger and more powerful than those we encounter in, say, ordinary dreams? Why do ayahuasca-drinkers from widely disparate cultures so often hallucinate similar phenomena, such as jaguars and snakes, or palaces and royalty? Why are the visions of even an atheist like Shanon so often laden with religious significance? Antipodes will no doubt be eagerly seized upon by the psychedelic intelligentsia. But it deserves to be read by anyone interested in religion, mysticism, and consciousness--and who is not? It should be required reading for psychologists, psychiatrists, and neuroscientists, because it shows how absurdly simplistic are the biochemical, Darwinian, and genetic models now dominating mind-science. Inner space, Shanon reminds us, truly is the last great frontier of science, and its reaches are vast and wild and strange.

Excellent, but heavy to digest, 10 Feb 2000
Excellent book concerning quantitative describtion of microbial systems and fermentor design in particular. Mathematical oriented book, that uses linear algebra as well as differential equations to solve the systems.

An introduction to toxicology for the student, 27 Nov 2001
This was one of the few textbooks that I actually bought for my BSc Toxicology course. This was of course not influenced by the fact that John Timbrell was head of department at the time. The book was a good adjunct to Prof Timbrell's lecture course and should prove usefull to all students of toxicolgy, in particular the processes of drug metabolism were well covered

Oddly Unsatisfying, 24 May 2007
John Emsley is one of my favourite science writers and I came to this tome with high hopes of being thoroughly entertained, but finished it with a vague sense of disappointment

Entitled « Elements of Murder » the book actually only considers the malicious use of five _ mercury, lead, arsenic, thallium and antimony. Unhappily for Emsley (and even more unhappily for the recipient), the alleged use of polonium as a poison post dates this work, or the variety could have been improved.

The science bits of the book (how and why these things are so darned nasty) is superbly written, as are the sections of what can only be called trivia - the speculations the both Mozart and Napoleon met their ends as the result of ingesting, either by accident or design, toxic metals. Where the book fails to deliver is in the description of some famous proved cases of murder by poisoning, such as those carried out by George Chapman. Emsley is a talented science writer, not a teller of juicy scandal and by the time the last couple of murders are reached, the tales are getting a little repetitive.

Buy the book for well written popular science and you will not be disappointed: buy it for the history of crime and I think you might feel short changed.


Just what the Doctor ordered., 08 Feb 2007
I really enjoyed reading this book. It struck an excellent balance between scientific insight and salacious gossip. What a combination!

I was reading this in my hospital bed needing something demanding enough to save me from terminal boredom, but that I could pick up in short bursts. Just what the Doctor ordered.

A Cheap 'Cut and Paste' Effort. , 27 Nov 2006
The concept of the book is clever: it takes the main heavy metal elements and discusses their uses and misuses, in respect of murder.
The result, however, is disappointing. It appears to have been written across a weekend by taking a few very basis facts and then pasting in chunks of `off the shelf' (often rambling) criminal biography.
Considering Emsley is a scientist most parts of the book are so un-scientific to be exasperating. I quote just two examples: in respect of the possibility of lead ingestion being the cause of gout (in the 1800's) `there is no reason why this could (cause gout) but it does' (!). Equally the madness of King George III he attributes to lead (despite a mass of contrary research on this subject - which he fails to quote), `because he was fond of lemonade and sauerkraut' (allegedly high in lead).
Readable, but a really cheap `put-together'. Mr Emsley, please spend a little more time

It didn't meet my expectations., 03 Sep 2006
This book was promising. My advice would be to read the introduction which is well written and interesting and ignore the rest of it. Everything that followed the introduction was of such a poor quality that I could not believe the author of the introduction to be the same as for the main body of the book. For reasons best known to the author there were digressions into vitriolic judgements on the sexual proclivities of King Charles and some quite unsustainable remarks about Isaac Newton. What a shame! I was really looking forward to this book, and whereas the introduction had some very nicely written paragraphs the main body of the book was in ungainly prose. I didn't read much beyond the third chapter -perhaps it improved.
For something much more worthwhile read Poisons: From Hemlock to Botox and the Killer Bean of Calabar by Peter Macinnins.

Clear explanations, well written, an excellent textbook., 24 Nov 2000
Of all the books I have bought for use as a reference in my work, this is the best purchase I have made to date. The text covers many forms of pollutants, how they get in to the environment, what happens to them when they get there, how they disperse, and their effects on each other, on individual organisms, populations and communities. The writing is clear and concise and very easy to understand, covering all the important classes of pollutants. Many books are needlessly bogged down with weighty details and cumbersome explanations, or with poorly explained diagrams which seem to bear little or no relevance to the text. This book is quite the opposite. However although it is essentially an outline text, I feel that some topics could have had more explanation, eg. Cytochrome P450 and endocrine disruptors - though perhaps these are the remit of more in-depth biochemistry texts. Purely from a practical point of view, this book is an excellent reference for research, study and practice of many aspects of environmental science.

Bad art, 08 Jan 2009
Ludwig Wittgenstein used to say that thoughts die the moment they are embodied by words ...This is even more true when we try to describe the experiences brought on by magic mushrooms and ayahuasca . Unless you possess the writing ability of Plato; coupled with a Shakespearean power of imagery, then the experiences you want to describe can turn into gobbledygook!!

Thus psychedelic experiences are easily ridiculed when downloaded into language. And downloaded into tasteless language they should be ridiculed. In this age of gurus and seers you run the risk of your ideas being bracketed in the new-age section alongside UFOs, Crystal Gazing and Scientology!

Fortunately Benny Shanon just about avoids this pitfall.

He is claiming that the ayahuasca experience is not another weird cult. Its real! Ayahuasca is a doorway to another modality that exists independent of our thoughts and feelings about it. More like shifting fantasy land than good old positivist rock n roll.

Sounds very nice. But ideas like these seem so crazy to our world of television and sport. But why not? Why should 500 years of scientific materialism have all the fun?

But there is a paradox which Mr Shanon doesn't seem to be aware of. This is the paradox between language and thought. The paradox is that you cannot see what another mind is trying to described! This is not at first obvious.

So if a person is raving on about psychedelic elf machines from the fractal void, we only have his word for it. Even if he is the most artuculate person or best writer imaginable; the word is never the thing. It amazes me how naive we are about the limits of language. This applies especially when describing drug induced trips.

So how do we get to the meat of this mystery? How do we demonstrate the validity of these phenomena to those who will never step outside the culturally sanctioned playpen?

One way is the written word approach and the other is via computer technology.

The bench test will be to design software that can model virtual worlds. A multifaceted simulation of a DMT flash. Computer generated vistas of psychedelic space-time. The pictures in this book give a glimpse of what can be done with a mouse and little imagination.

Alas, I wasn't converted. The Ayahuasca art included in this book, and indeed all over the internet look lovely, but they don't mirror alien phenomena to me. They only give a glimpse of a future technological art paradigm. They are the swine before the pearls!

Its sad that innovative artwork, facilitated by ayahuasca, boils down to weird reptilian humanoids, fractal geometry and spaceships orbiting planets etc. The artwork is very pretty. But art created by experienced psychonauts should posses boundary dissolving properties that 'normal' artists cannot possibly match.

This is why, to my mind, ayahuasca art doesn't come close to say a Hieronymus Bosch or a Salvador Dali in weirdness. Bosch and Dali had something boundary dissolving about their creations. They resembled mad men trying to communicate something only they could see.

I doubt whether Hieronymus Bosch or Salvador Dali had access to magic mushrooms of ayahuasca. So whats going on? This is just my personal bias though. What do others think?

P.S. Try downloading audio lectures by Terence Mckenna or 'YouTube' the man instead. Mckenna was famous for his oratory skills so he's a good place to start if you want clues to the experiences described in this book.


A landmark of research on altered states, 01 Apr 2003
This is one of the most compelling books on altered states I’ve read, up there with James’s Varieties of Religious Experience, Huxley’s Doors of Perception (to which Shanon’s title alludes) and PIHKAL and TIKHAL by Ann and Alexander Shulgin. Unlike, say, the psychedelic performance artist Terence McKenna (whose writings I enjoy), Shanon’s authorial persona is earnest, serious, straightforward, absolutely trustworthy. He is a true scientist, dedicated to precise reporting and careful analysis rather than to entertainment. Not that his book is dull. Far from it. Antipodes is suffused with a sense of genuine adventure, of a kind that has virtually vanished from modern science. Plunging into the depths of his own ayahuasca-intoxicated mind, Shanon resembles one of the great Victorian explorers trekking into uncharted wilds, maintaining his equilibrium and wits even in the face of the most fantastical sights. Like Darwin on the voyage of the Beagle, Shanon is concerned primarily with collecting and categorizing data rather than theorizing. At the end of his book, however, he ponders his and others’ experiences and draws some tentative conclusions. Ayahuasca, he asserts, can be both truth-revealing and "the worst of liars." Shanon remains skeptical of the occult claims often made for the drug—that it puts us in touch with spirits, makes us clairvoyant, lets us leave our bodies and travel astrally. He suggests that ayahuasca visions are products of the imagination rather than glimpses of a supernatural realm existing in parallel to our own. This proposal will sound reductionistic to some, but it is actually quite provocative, and raises many questions requiring further consideration. Why does the imagination, when stimulated by ayahuasca, yield visions so much stranger and more powerful than those we encounter in, say, ordinary dreams? Why do ayahuasca-drinkers from widely disparate cultures so often hallucinate similar phenomena, such as jaguars and snakes, or palaces and royalty? Why are the visions of even an atheist like Shanon so often laden with religious significance? Antipodes will no doubt be eagerly seized upon by the psychedelic intelligentsia. But it deserves to be read by anyone interested in religion, mysticism, and consciousness--and who is not? It should be required reading for psychologists, psychiatrists, and neuroscientists, because it shows how absurdly simplistic are the biochemical, Darwinian, and genetic models now dominating mind-science. Inner space, Shanon reminds us, truly is the last great frontier of science, and its reaches are vast and wild and strange.

Excellent, but heavy to digest, 10 Feb 2000
Excellent book concerning quantitative describtion of microbial systems and fermentor design in particular. Mathematical oriented book, that uses linear algebra as well as differential equations to solve the systems.

An introduction to toxicology for the student, 27 Nov 2001
This was one of the few textbooks that I actually bought for my BSc Toxicology course. This was of course not influenced by the fact that John Timbrell was head of department at the time. The book was a good adjunct to Prof Timbrell's lecture course and should prove usefull to all students of toxicolgy, in particular the processes of drug metabolism were well covered

Oddly Unsatisfying, 24 May 2007
John Emsley is one of my favourite science writers and I came to this tome with high hopes of being thoroughly entertained, but finished it with a vague sense of disappointment

Entitled « Elements of Murder » the book actually only considers the malicious use of five _ mercury, lead, arsenic, thallium and antimony. Unhappily for Emsley (and even more unhappily for the recipient), the alleged use of polonium as a poison post dates this work, or the variety could have been improved.

The science bits of the book (how and why these things are so darned nasty) is superbly written, as are the sections of what can only be called trivia - the speculations the both Mozart and Napoleon met their ends as the result of ingesting, either by accident or design, toxic metals. Where the book fails to deliver is in the description of some famous proved cases of murder by poisoning, such as those carried out by George Chapman. Emsley is a talented science writer, not a teller of juicy scandal and by the time the last couple of murders are reached, the tales are getting a little repetitive.

Buy the book for well written popular science and you will not be disappointed: buy it for the history of crime and I think you might feel short changed.


Just what the Doctor ordered., 08 Feb 2007
I really enjoyed reading this book. It struck an excellent balance between scientific insight and salacious gossip. What a combination!

I was reading this in my hospital bed needing something demanding enough to save me from terminal boredom, but that I could pick up in short bursts. Just what the Doctor ordered.

A Cheap 'Cut and Paste' Effort. , 27 Nov 2006
The concept of the book is clever: it takes the main heavy metal elements and discusses their uses and misuses, in respect of murder.
The result, however, is disappointing. It appears to have been written across a weekend by taking a few very basis facts and then pasting in chunks of `off the shelf' (often rambling) criminal biography.
Considering Emsley is a scientist most parts of the book are so un-scientific to be exasperating. I quote just two examples: in respect of the possibility of lead ingestion being the cause of gout (in the 1800's) `there is no reason why this could (cause gout) but it does' (!). Equally the madness of King George III he attributes to lead (despite a mass of contrary research on this subject - which he fails to quote), `because he was fond of lemonade and sauerkraut' (allegedly high in lead).
Readable, but a really cheap `put-together'. Mr Emsley, please spend a little more time

It didn't meet my expectations., 03 Sep 2006
This book was promising. My advice would be to read the introduction which is well written and interesting and ignore the rest of it. Everything that followed the introduction was of such a poor quality that I could not believe the author of the introduction to be the same as for the main body of the book. For reasons best known to the author there were digressions into vitriolic judgements on the sexual proclivities of King Charles and some quite unsustainable remarks about Isaac Newton. What a shame! I was really looking forward to this book, and whereas the introduction had some very nicely written paragraphs the main body of the book was in ungainly prose. I didn't read much beyond the third chapter -perhaps it improved.
For something much more worthwhile read Poisons: From Hemlock to Botox and the Killer Bean of Calabar by Peter Macinnins.

Oddly Unsatisfying, 24 May 2007
John Emsley is one of my favourite science writers and I came to this tome with high hopes of being thoroughly entertained, but finished it with a vague sense of disappointment

Entitled « Elements of Murder » the book actually only considers the malicious use of five _ mercury, lead, arsenic, thallium and antimony. Unhappily for Emsley (and even more unhappily for the recipient), the alleged use of polonium as a poison post dates this work, or the variety could have been improved.

The science bits of the book (how and why these things are so darned nasty) is superbly written, as are the sections of what can only be called trivia - the speculations the both Mozart and Napoleon met their ends as the result of ingesting, either by accident or design, toxic metals. Where the book fails to deliver is in the description of some famous proved cases of murder by poisoning, such as those carried out by George Chapman. Emsley is a talented science writer, not a teller of juicy scandal and by the time the last couple of murders are reached, the tales are getting a little repetitive.

Buy the book for well written popular science and you will not be disappointed: buy it for the history of crime and I think you might feel short changed.


Just what the Doctor ordered., 08 Feb 2007
I really enjoyed reading this book. It struck an excellent balance between scientific insight and salacious gossip. What a combination!

I was reading this in my hospital bed needing something demanding enough to save me from terminal boredom, but that I could pick up in short bursts. Just what the Doctor ordered.

A Cheap 'Cut and Paste' Effort. , 27 Nov 2006
The concept of the book is clever: it takes the main heavy metal elements and discusses their uses and misuses, in respect of murder.
The result, however, is disappointing. It appears to have been written across a weekend by taking a few very basis facts and then pasting in chunks of `off the shelf' (often rambling) criminal biography.
Considering Emsley is a scientist most parts of the book are so un-scientific to be exasperating. I quote just two examples: in respect of the possibility of lead ingestion being the cause of gout (in the 1800's) `there is no reason why this could (cause gout) but it does' (!). Equally the madness of King George III he attributes to lead (despite a mass of contrary research on this subject - which he fails to quote), `because he was fond of lemonade and sauerkraut' (allegedly high in lead).
Readable, but a really cheap `put-together'. Mr Emsley, please spend a little more time

It didn't meet my expectations., 03 Sep 2006
This book was promising. My advice would be to read the introduction which is well written and interesting and ignore the rest of it. Everything that followed the introduction was of such a poor quality that I could not believe the author of the introduction to be the same as for the main body of the book. For reasons best known to the author there were digressions into vitriolic judgements on the sexual proclivities of King Charles and some quite unsustainable remarks about Isaac Newton. What a shame! I was really looking forward to this book, and whereas the introduction had some very nicely written paragraphs the main body of the book was in ungainly prose. I didn't read much beyond the third chapter -perhaps it improved.
For something much more worthwhile read Poisons: From Hemlock to Botox and the Killer Bean of Calabar by Peter Macinnins.

Clear explanations, well written, an excellent textbook., 24 Nov 2000
Of all the books I have bought for use as a reference in my work, this is the best purchase I have made to date. The text covers many forms of pollutants, how they get in to the environment, what happens to them when they get there, how they disperse, and their effects on each other, on individual organisms, populations and communities. The writing is clear and concise and very easy to understand, covering all the important classes of pollutants. Many books are needlessly bogged down with weighty details and cumbersome explanations, or with poorly explained diagrams which seem to bear little or no relevance to the text. This book is quite the opposite. However although it is essentially an outline text, I feel that some topics could have had more explanation, eg. Cytochrome P450 and endocrine disruptors - though perhaps these are the remit of more in-depth biochemistry texts. Purely from a practical point of view, this book is an excellent reference for research, study and practice of many aspects of environmental science.

Bad art, 08 Jan 2009
Ludwig Wittgenstein used to say that thoughts die the moment they are embodied by words ...This is even more true when we try to describe the experiences brought on by magic mushrooms and ayahuasca . Unless you possess the writing ability of Plato; coupled with a Shakespearean power of imagery, then the experiences you want to describe can turn into gobbledygook!!

Thus psychedelic experiences are easily ridiculed when downloaded into language. And downloaded into tasteless language they should be ridiculed. In this age of gurus and seers you run the risk of your ideas being bracketed in the new-age section alongside UFOs, Crystal Gazing and Scientology!

Fortunately Benny Shanon just about avoids this pitfall.

He is claiming that the ayahuasca experience is not another weird cult. Its real! Ayahuasca is a doorway to another modality that exists independent of our thoughts and feelings about it. More like shifting fantasy land than good old positivist rock n roll.

Sounds very nice. But ideas like these seem so crazy to our world of television and sport. But why not? Why should 500 years of scientific materialism have all the fun?

But there is a paradox which Mr Shanon doesn't seem to be aware of. This is the paradox between language and thought. The paradox is that you cannot see what another mind is trying to described! This is not at first obvious.

So if a person is raving on about psychedelic elf machines from the fractal void, we only have his word for it. Even if he is the most artuculate person or best writer imaginable; the word is never the thing. It amazes me how naive we are about the limits of language. This applies especially when describing drug induced trips.

So how do we get to the meat of this mystery? How do we demonstrate the validity of these phenomena to those who will never step outside the culturally sanctioned playpen?

One way is the written word approach and the other is via computer technology.

The bench test will be to design software that can model virtual worlds. A multifaceted simulation of a DMT flash. Computer generated vistas of psychedelic space-time. The pictures in this book give a glimpse of what can be done with a mouse and little imagination.

Alas, I wasn't converted. The Ayahuasca art included in this book, and indeed all over the internet look lovely, but they don't mirror alien phenomena to me. They only give a glimpse of a future technological art paradigm. They are the swine before the pearls!

Its sad that innovative artwork, facilitated by ayahuasca, boils down to weird reptilian humanoids, fractal geometry and spaceships orbiting planets etc. The artwork is very pretty. But art created by experienced psychonauts should posses boundary dissolving properties that 'normal' artists cannot possibly match.

This is why, to my mind, ayahuasca art doesn't come close to say a Hieronymus Bosch or a Salvador Dali in weirdness. Bosch and Dali had something boundary dissolving about their creations. They resembled mad men trying to communicate something only they could see.

I doubt whether Hieronymus Bosch or Salvador Dali had access to magic mushrooms of ayahuasca. So whats going on? This is just my personal bias though. What do others think?

P.S. Try downloading audio lectures by Terence Mckenna or 'YouTube' the man instead. Mckenna was famous for his oratory skills so he's a good place to start if you want clues to the experiences described in this book.


A landmark of research on altered states, 01 Apr 2003
This is one of the most compelling books on altered states I’ve read, up there with James’s Varieties of Religious Experience, Huxley’s Doors of Perception (to which Shanon’s title alludes) and PIHKAL and TIKHAL by Ann and Alexander Shulgin. Unlike, say, the psychedelic performance artist Terence McKenna (whose writings I enjoy), Shanon’s authorial persona is earnest, serious, straightforward, absolutely trustworthy. He is a true scientist, dedicated to precise reporting and careful analysis rather than to entertainment. Not that his book is dull. Far from it. Antipodes is suffused with a sense of genuine adventure, of a kind that has virtually vanished from modern science. Plunging into the depths of his own ayahuasca-intoxicated mind, Shanon resembles one of the great Victorian explorers trekking into uncharted wilds, maintaining his equilibrium and wits even in the face of the most fantastical sights. Like Darwin on the voyage of the Beagle, Shanon is concerned primarily with collecting and categorizing data rather than theorizing. At the end of his book, however, he ponders his and others’ experiences and draws some tentative conclusions. Ayahuasca, he asserts, can be both truth-revealing and "the worst of liars." Shanon remains skeptical of the occult claims often made for the drug—that it puts us in touch with spirits, makes us clairvoyant, lets us leave our bodies and travel astrally. He suggests that ayahuasca visions are products of the imagination rather than glimpses of a supernatural realm existing in parallel to our own. This proposal will sound reductionistic to some, but it is actually quite provocative, and raises many questions requiring further consideration. Why does the imagination, when stimulated by ayahuasca, yield visions so much stranger and more powerful than those we encounter in, say, ordinary dreams? Why do ayahuasca-drinkers from widely disparate cultures so often hallucinate similar phenomena, such as jaguars and snakes, or palaces and royalty? Why are the visions of even an atheist like Shanon so often laden with religious significance? Antipodes will no doubt be eagerly seized upon by the psychedelic intelligentsia. But it deserves to be read by anyone interested in religion, mysticism, and consciousness--and who is not? It should be required reading for psychologists, psychiatrists, and neuroscientists, because it shows how absurdly simplistic are the biochemical, Darwinian, and genetic models now dominating mind-science. Inner space, Shanon reminds us, truly is the last great frontier of science, and its reaches are vast and wild and strange.

Excellent, but heavy to digest, 10 Feb 2000
Excellent book concerning quantitative describtion of microbial systems and fermentor design in particular. Mathematical oriented book, that uses linear algebra as well as differential equations to solve the systems.

An introduction to toxicology for the student, 27 Nov 2001
This was one of the few textbooks that I actually bought for my BSc Toxicology course. This was of course not influenced by the fact that John Timbrell was head of department at the time. The book was a good adjunct to Prof Timbrell's lecture course and should prove usefull to all students of toxicolgy, in particular the processes of drug metabolism were well covered

Oddly Unsatisfying, 24 May 2007
John Emsley is one of my favourite science writers and I came to this tome with high hopes of being thoroughly entertained, but finished it with a vague sense of disappointment

Entitled « Elements of Murder » the book actually only considers the malicious use of five _ mercury, lead, arsenic, thallium and antimony. Unhappily for Emsley (and even more unhappily for the recipient), the alleged use of polonium as a poison post dates this work, or the variety could have been improved.

The science bits of the book (how and why these things are so darned nasty) is superbly written, as are the sections of what can only be called trivia - the speculations the both Mozart and Napoleon met their ends as the result of ingesting, either by accident or design, toxic metals. Where the book fails to deliver is in the description of some famous proved cases of murder by poisoning, such as those carried out by George Chapman. Emsley is a talented science writer, not a teller of juicy scandal and by the time the last couple of murders are reached, the tales are getting a little repetitive.

Buy the book for well written popular science and you will not be disappointed: buy it for the history of crime and I think you might feel short changed.


Just what the Doctor ordered., 08 Feb 2007
I really enjoyed reading this book. It struck an excellent balance between scientific insight and salacious gossip. What a combination!

I was reading this in my hospital bed needing something demanding enough to save me from terminal boredom, but that I could pick up in short bursts. Just what the Doctor ordered.

A Cheap 'Cut and Paste' Effort. , 27 Nov 2006
The concept of the book is clever: it takes the main heavy metal elements and discusses their uses and misuses, in respect of murder.
The result, however, is disappointing. It appears to have been written across a weekend by taking a few very basis facts and then pasting in chunks of `off the shelf' (often rambling) criminal biography.
Considering Emsley is a scientist most parts of the book are so un-scientific to be exasperating. I quote just two examples: in respect of the possibility of lead ingestion being the cause of gout (in the 1800's) `there is no reason why this could (cause gout) but it does' (!). Equally the madness of King George III he attributes to lead (despite a mass of contrary research on this subject - which he fails to quote), `because he was fond of lemonade and sauerkraut' (allegedly high in lead).
Readable, but a really cheap `put-together'. Mr Emsley, please spend a little more time

It didn't meet my expectations., 03 Sep 2006
This book was promising. My advice would be to read the introduction which is well written and interesting and ignore the rest of it. Everything that followed the introduction was of such a poor quality that I could not believe the author of the introduction to be the same as for the main body of the book. For reasons best known to the author there were digressions into vitriolic judgements on the sexual proclivities of King Charles and some quite unsustainable remarks about Isaac Newton. What a shame! I was really looking forward to this book, and whereas the introduction had some very nicely written paragraphs the main body of the book was in ungainly prose. I didn't read much beyond the third chapter -perhaps it improved.
For something much more worthwhile read Poisons: From Hemlock to Botox and the Killer Bean of Calabar by Peter Macinnins.

An entertaining quick reference guide to almost every drug, 07 Sep 2000
This isn't drug use manual, you won't any notes on the preparation and dosage of any of the substances in the book. However as a quick reference guide to the history and customs surrounding any number of obscure and not so obscure drugs it is invaulable. In it you will find anything from the potential of the goat fish to cause nightmares to the history of glue sniffing and an analysis of our habitiual use of caffiene.

Rudgely does't make any judgements as to the morality of drug use, instead he presents the simple facts whilst avoiding anthropological jargon. The one glaring omission is alcohol which only recieves a passing reference but the book doesn't suffer for it. Well worth a read for anyone with more than a passing interest in the subject be they parents, users or anthropolgy students.