How to Change Your Mind (Pollan) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
How to Change Your Mind is a calm survey of the past, present and future. A book about a blurry subject, it is cleareyed and assured. Pollan is not the most obvious guide for such a journey. He is, to judge from his self-reporting, a giant square.… [But] Pollan's initial skepticism and general lack of hipness work wonders for the material. The problem with more enthusiastic or even hallucinatory writers on the subject is that they just compound the zaniness at the heart of the thing; it's all too much of the same tone, like having George Will walk you through the tax code. Like another best-selling Michael (Lewis), Pollan keeps you turning the pages even through his wonkiest stretches.
John Williams - New York Times


As is to be expected of a nonfiction writer of his caliber, Pollan makes the story of the rise and fall and rise of psychedelic drug research gripping and surprising. He also reminds readers that excitement around any purportedly groundbreaking substance tends to dim as studies widen.… Where Pollan truly shines is in his exploration of the mysticism and spirituality of psychedelic experiences.… Michael Pollan, somehow predictably, does the impossible: He makes losing your mind sound like the sanest thing a person could do.
Tom Bissell - New York Times Book Review


Pollan’s deeply researched chronicle will enlighten those who think of psychedelics chiefly as a kind of punchline to a joke about the Woodstock generation and hearten the growing number who view them as a potential antidote to our often stubbornly narrow minds.… [E]ngaging and informative.
Boston Globe


Sweeping and often thrilling…. It is to Pollan’s credit that, while he ranks among the best of science writers, he’s willing, when necessary, to abandon that genre’s fixation on materialist explanation as the only path to understanding. One of the book’s important messages is that the therapeutic benefits of psychedelics, for the dying or seriously ill, can’t be separated from the mystical experiences to which they give rise.
Guardian


Journalist Michael Pollan explored psychoactive plants in The Botany of Desire (2001). In this bold, intriguing study, he delves further…Pollan even ‘shakes the snow globe’ himself, chemically self-experimenting in the spirit of psychologist William James, who speculated about the wilder shores of consciousness more than a century ago.
Nature, International Journal of Science


Known for his writing on plants and food, Michael Pollan… brings all the curiosity and skepticism for which he is well known to a decidedly different topic.… How to Change Your Mind beautifully updates and synthesizes the science of psychedelics, with a highly personalized touch.
Science


Amid new scientific interest in the potential healing properties of psychedelic drugs, Pollan…sets about researching their history—and giving them  a (supervised!) try himself.  He came away impressed by their promise in treating addiction and depression—and with his mind expanded. Yours will be too.
People


[Starred review] [A] brilliant history of psychedelics across cultures and generations…. This nuanced and sophisticated exploration, which asks big questions about meaning-making and spiritual experience, is thought-provoking and eminently readable.
Publishers Weekly


Before Timothy Leary… scientists and doctors saw… psychedelics as tremendous new tools for understanding consciousness. Now, these back-burnered drugs are proving effective in treating such disorders as PTSD and depression.
Library Journal


[Starred review] Pollan’s…elucidating and enthralling inquiry combines fascinating and significant history with daring and resonant reportage and memoir, and looks forward to a new open-mindedness toward psychedelics and the benefits of diverse forms of consciousness.
Booklist


(Starred review) The author's evenhanded but generally positive approach shoos away scaremongering while fully recognizing that we're out in the tall grass….A trip well worth taking, eye-opening and even mind-blowing.
Kirkus Reviews