Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge — A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution

By Terence McKenna

McKenna's central work and the fullest statement of his "stoned ape" thesis — that psilocybin mushrooms shaped the emergence of human language and consciousness. It ranges across prehistoric partnership societies, the rise of sugar, spices, coffee and alcohol, and the politics of which substances a culture permits. Contentious as science, unmatched as an argument, and the book that made his name.