some conjecture among the observations, otherwise quite informative

Wonderful, underrated, comprehensive, convincing. I never realized how serious of an anthropologist Wasson was — after reading his research on the mushrooms and ethnographies, it’s hard to fault him for the sometimes unfortunate but certainly unforeseeable consequences of his ‘bringing the mushrooms’ to America. If his ‘followers’, or those who sought out the mushrooms in Mexico and Oaxaca after he published his discovery of Maria Sabina in Life, had half the care and respect he had for the drugs and their attendant religion, perhaps our own culture of psychedelics would be in a different, more accepted, and more responsible place…

Informative and groundbreaking at the time (late 1950's), The Sacred Mushroom deals mostly with anthropological observations made upon the Mayatecan and Aztecan culture of religious mushroom use throughout the ages and the complete suppression of it by the Church, post-Conquest. This is a good book with lots of citations and cross referencing to solidify the posits put forth, but unfortunately written by an author who holds his own judgments and who lacks the ability to color his prose. The book trudges along at ~220 pages, and after awhile, you feel like you're reading the same facts and arguments restated over and over. If you're looking for a more imaginatively authored work, and one that also cites Wasson (the author) from time to time, look to Terrence Mckenna's 'Food of the Gods'.