you have either not read the review or know how to read films and i’m assuming it’s the first. While filed under book reviews, it should be obvious to anyone that when a director, producer and ‘publisher’ by the name of National Film Board of Canada are listed we are in fact dealing with a movie instead of a book.

I hope you will enjoy it anyway.

However, i want to make a brief comment that he has erred on dozens of pages regarding his interpretation on the history of magic mushrooms, especially about Wasson and the importance of the PNW’s history of the spread of mushrooms which originated here. He even posted false information about Koh Samui and comments which he referenced in his footnotes from my paper on Thailand mushrooms by writing false information which never appeared in my paper.

He leads one to believe that their cultural contemporary history had its beginnings in the UK and not in the USA.

His omission of ‘Magic Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest” from his book, along with almost a dozen other field guides, shows that he was not fully aware of the history in the Southeast and Pacific Northwest of the United States of America, and of their contributions to the spread of psilocybian consciousness throughout the world. His blatant attempt to lure readers into his viewpoint that England and the rest of the UK were responsible for the spread of Psilocybian Consciousness throughout the world is portrayed by Letcher as fact when in reality it is a false presumption.

He wrote in Chapter 13 –
Page 239 paragraph 3

[quote]Andy writes on this page in the 3rd paragraph about an author named Darnton who wrote a shroom article for the English mag ‘Oz.’[/quote]

His quote is:

[Quote] Darnton’s article was eventually followed, four-years later, by the first guidebook to the British Mycoflora, Richard Cooper’s, “A Guide to British Psilocybin Mushrooms (1974).50[/quote]

Here is note 50 from the footnotes:

[Quote]"The only other widely spread booklet on magic mushroom identification was published in 1979 by the drugs charity RELEASE. This was several years after the mushrooms had gone over ground, and so it was responsible for bringing the mushroom to widespread attention,. SEE Release, 1979[/quote]

[quote]This is also not true, Between 1970 and 1978 almost one dozen field guides were published and sold in the United States and Homestead Book Company which published some of them, as well as distributed them, became their main distributor and additionally did so for High Times in which was first published in 1974. Between 1974 and 1978, most of the mushroom identification field guides were for sale to the public and in stores throughout America. And additionally, 7 magic mushroom cultivation guides were also published during that same period. And as noted, my book, “Magic Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest” is the oldest and longest selling field guide on psilocybian mushrooms in the world, published in July 1976 and it is still in print, having sold over 100,000 copies since 1976. Furthermore, by 1980, High Times was sold in England at that time and it brought about the English drug magazine known as, “Home Grown.”[/quote]. Some of those same field guides were also available in Great Britain in the late 1970s. I have a new article from England which even shows a High Times ad for Homestead Book Company’s Shroom Kit in the United Kingdom newspaper article.

Letcher also referred to High Times as the American “dope’ mag.

Hopefully my debunking article will appear soon and I can send a copy to erowid.

have a shroomy day,

john

Sorry I cannot post more about this at the moment.