Synergetic Press Rights Catalog

SynergeticPress FOREIGN RIGHTS CATALOG Global Ecology, Ethnobotany, Biography and History

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Foreword Small Press Collective Hall 8.0 R68 tango@synergeticpress.com Cell +1.505.603.5822 www.synergeticpress.com

WELCOME

FEATURED TITLES Synergetic Press is dedicated to publishing writers who develop our understanding of the complex and evolving nature of our planet, and the challenges we face as humans to not only survive, but to thrive in harmony with the biosphere. With a focus on the environment, botany, ethnobotany, biospherics, economics and culture, we publish challenging and illuminating works that embrace both classical and cutting-edge ideas.

Synergetic Press is more than a publisher. Books, both print and digital, are only one of the ways we promote discussions of humanity’s future; we also organize and participate in forums and events featuring leading thinkers on our planetary future giving the Press a unique position from which to curate content and engage in some of the most fertile areas of discussion and investigation.

I hope you find some of our featured titles of interest for your booklist, and welcome proposals for possible collaborations with your company. Please visit our website for our complete catalog, news and other updates on our authors, publications and events.

With best regards,

Deborah Parrish Snyder Publisher

Down the Global Drain: Adventures of a Wastewater Gardener

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Me and the Biospheres: A Memoir by the Inventor of Biosphere 2

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Vine of the Soul: Medicine Men, their Plants and Rituals

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Where the Gods Reign: Plants and People of the Colombian Amazon

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White Gold: The Diary of a Rubber Cutter in Brazil 1906-1916

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Birth of a Psychedelic Culture: Conversations about Leary, the Harvard Experiments, Millbrook and the ‘60s

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Far Out and Far Away – A Novel of Emergent Evolution

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Perilous Passage: The Nervous System and the Universe in Other Words

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By Mark Nelson, PhD, Foreword by Tony Juniper The “Last Taboo,” human waste and the future of resources.

(GLOBAL ECOLOGY)

By John Allen Definitive autobiography of a pioneer in biospherics, creator of Biosphere 2, the largest laboratory for global ecology ever built. Winner of the Benjamin Franklin Award for Best Autobiography.

(AUTOBIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR)

By Richard Evans Schultes and Robert F. Raffauf Classic photographic record documenting medicinal use of plants in the Colombian Amazonia.

(ETHNOBOTANY)

by Richard Evans Schultes Legendary Amazon explorer documents the people of the forest and spawns a new discipline of economic botany.

(ETHNOBOTANY)

By John C. Yungjohann, edited by Sir Ghillean T. Prance True story of survival in early 20th century at the height of the Rubber Boom.

(HISTORY/Ethnobotany)

By Ram Dass and Ralph Metzner with Gary Bravo Shines a bright light on the cultural milieu of the 1960s with previously unseen photographs and personal memoirs of two of the pioneers in psychedelic research and numerous other contributors.

(HISTORY/Psychedelic Research)

By Johnny Dolphin A highly imaginative science fiction tale of what the future could bring.

(SCIENCE FICTION)

By Terry Wilson An avant-garde memoir of a lifetime’s apprenticeship to shaman Brion Gysin .

(MEMOIR)

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GLOBAL ECOLOGY

BIOGRAPHY

DOWN THE GLOBAL DRAIN – ADVENTURES OF A WASTEWATER GARDENER - Forthcoming

By Mark Nelson Foreword by Tony Juniper What does one do after leaving the paradise that was Biosphere 2? For one former biospherian, the answer was to find ways to deal with the very last taboo – human bodily effluents. Dr. Mark Nelson takes us on an amusing down-to-earth global-wide expedition to examine how we can recycle and make viable use of human waste as a resource rather than using our diminishing precious water supplies to hide it away. Solving toxic waste treatment is key to solving many global problems of health, water pollution and agricultural soil decline. The author’s personal story is unusual, coming from a thoroughly urban upbringing, to becoming first an organic orchardist, then a member of the team inside Biosphere 2 responsible for its constructed wetland sewage system, to building ecological wastewater treatment systems around the world. The book is written in easily understood layman’s terms, accompanied by simple diagrams and pictures.

ISBN 978-0-907791-51-5 Illustrated 296 pages 7 x 9 inches, softcover $23.95 World: except English language

“Growing public interest in climate change today is encouraging, as it means people are starting to take responsibility for their role in looking after the planet.

Even the greatest deniers of what is happening can understand that what we’re doing on the planet is unsustainable … we need to rethink how we live, learn to live sustainably and healthier with our precious biosphere.”

– Mark Nelson, member Biosphere 2 Crew, Mission One (1991-1993)

By John Allen Winner of the Benjamin Franklin Award for Best Biography/Memoir, Me and the Biospheres is the definitive autobiography of John P. Allen, inventor of the largest laboratory for global ecology ever built and one of the most luminous minds of our time. Contained within a magnificently designed air-tight glass-andsteel-framed setting, Biosphere 2 covered three acres of Arizona desert and included models of seven biomes: an ocean with coral reef, marsh, rainforest, savannah, desert, farm and a micro-city. Eight people lived inside this structure for two years (1991-1993) and set world records in human life support while monitoring their impact on the environment and providing crucial data for future manned missions into outer space.

Anyone concerned with the current world trajectory will identify with Allen’s uplifting account of the most ambitious environmental experiment ever undertaken. Humorous and Whitmanesque, Me and the Biospheres is a tribute to the ingenuity and dauntlessness of the human mind and a passionate call to reawaken to the beauty of our peerless home, Biosphere 1, the Earth.

“Me and the Biospheres is an excellent and highly inspiring book, showing in ISBN 978-0-907791-37-9 a fascinating way what single humans can accomplish with like minds, and Illustrated how important and trend-setting far reaching holistic thinking and 336 pages consciousness change is for human evolution and survival of our 8 x 10 inches, softcover species within a livable environment, the gaian biosphere.” $39.95 – Dieter A. Hagenbach, Gaia Media Foundation World: except English language

Mark Nelson

John allen

Dr. Nelson served as Director of Space and Environmental Applications for Space Biospheres Ventures, which created and operated Biosphere 2, the 3.15 acre enclosed facility near Tucson, Arizona, the world’s first laboratory for global ecology (www.biospheres.com). He has worked for several decades in closed ecological system research, ecological engineering, restoration of damaged ecosystems, orchardry and desert agriculture, and wastewater recycling. Vice Chairman of Global Ecotechnics Corporation, he is a founding director, current Chairman and CEO of the Institute of Ecotechnics (www.ecotechnics.edu), a U.K. non-profit organization, which consults to several demonstration projects working in challenging biomes around the world.

John Allen, author, poet, playwright, inventor, conceiver and co-founder of the Biosphere 2 project – the world’s largest laboratory for global ecology. Biosphere 2 set a number of world records in closed life system work including, among others, degree of sealing tightness, 100% waste recycle and water recycle, and duration of human residence within a closed system (eight people for two years). Allen has also conceived and co-founded nine other projects around the world, pioneering in sustainable co-evolutionary development.

Besides many scientific papers on ecological hierarchy and applications of closed ecological systems, his publications include co-authoring Life Under Glass: The Inside Story of Biosphere 2 and Space Biospheres. For more information on Mark’s scientific writings go to http://www.globalecotechnics.com/publications.

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Me and the biospheres

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Allen began the first manned Biosphere Test Module experiment in September 1988, residing in the almost fully recyclable closed ecological system environment for three days and setting a world record at that time, proving that closed ecological systems would work with humans inside. As the vice-president of Biospheric Development for the project, as well as Executive Chairman, Allen was responsible for the science and engineering that created the materially closed life system, as well as the development of spin-off technologies.

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ETHNOBOTANY

ISBN 978-0-907791-31-7 Illustrated 290 pages 8 x 10 inches, softcover $29.95 World: except English and Spanish language

ETHNOBOTANY

VINE OF THE SOUL: Medicine Men, Their Plants and Rituals in the Colombian Amazonia

Where the Gods Reign: Plants and People of the Colombian Amazon

By Richard Evans Schultes and Robert F. Raffauf

By Richard Evans Schultes

This is the story of a time that was, when indigenous peoples of the Amazon were free to roam the forest and rivers, happy with their social institutions, unencumbered by acculturation or the cultural destruction of their ancient societies and virgin forests. Vine of the Soul is an exceptional photographic essay accompanied by detailed descriptions of the Amazon natives’ use of medicinal and other sacred plant substances. Over 160 documentary photos, some of the most significant ever taken on the subject, bring the reader along a journey in which healing with plants is the norm, and ritual and magic play an essential role in everyday life. Richard Evans Schultes, former Director of the Botanical Museum of Harvard University, led an extraordinary life that bridged the worlds of academia and tribal cultures.

Journey through the mysterious Columbian Amazon with a remarkable and eloquent scientist as your guide. More than 140 striking black and white photographs, accompanied by vividly descriptive text were taken during an uninterrupted period between 1940 and 1957 when the author lived with and studied the indigenous peoples of the NW Colombian Amazon region.

Included is an excellent overview of the great river basin as a whole.

“Quite simply a masterpiece ... Vine of the Soul deserves to be read by everyone interested in rainforests, indigenous peoples, shamanism, hallucinogens, ethnomedicine and conservation.”

– Mark Plotkin, President, Amazon Conservation Team

Richard Evans Schultes and Robert F. Raffauf Dr. Schultes (right) is considered by many as the father of contemporary ethnobotany and was one of the most important Amazonian plant explorer of the 20th century. Carrying out extensive field studies since 1939 as an ethnobotanist and conservationist, Schultes received acclaim from many sources, including the Cross of Boyacá Colombia’s highest honor, the Tyler Prize for environmental achievement, the Linnean Gold Medal - the highest prize a botanist can receive, and many more. Dr. Schultes was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Linnean Society of London, three Latin American Academies, the Academy of India, and Third World Academy of Sciences Co-authored with Robert F. Raffauf, a plant chemist, who provided detailed information on the bioactive chemistry and medicinal properties of the plants in use.

“Where the Gods Reign is a magnificent book by one of the greatest Amazon explorers of this century -- a must for the library of any Amazon oriented person.”

– Sir Ghillean Prance, Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew

ISBN 978-0-907791-13-3 Illustrated The book offers valuable insights into a part of the Amazonia that we are rapidly 312 pages losing: the forest and the people of the forest who have the most knowledge of 8 x 10 inches, softcover the plants and their uses ... Best used to illustrate the relationship of indigenous $20.00 peoples of Colombian Amazonia with the forest.”

World: except English language – Thomas A. Stone, Science Books and Films

Richard Evans Schultes 1915 - 2001 Richard Schultes is a true ethnobotanist, the incarnation and almost the inventor of the discipline ...

– Sir John Hemming, TLS

The second edition contains a Preface by Wade Davis, Explorer-in-Residence for the National Geographic Society; a Foreword by Sir Ghillean Prance, Former Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, England; and Epilogue by Michael Balick, Director of Institute of Economic Botany, New York Botanical Gardens.

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HISTORY

HISTORY

White Gold: The Diary of a Rubber Cutter in BRAZIL 1906-1916

By John C. Yungjohann Edited by Sir Ghillean T. Prance The crisis of the rainforest began a century ago when it was discovered to be a source of rubber. This brought commercial interests into collision with this complex ecology – its plants, its animals and its peoples. At the height of the rubber boom in the early years of this century, a young American, John Yungjohann, struggled for survival as a rubber cutter. The diaries he kept have recently come to light and have been edited by Sir Ghillean Prance of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, England, one of the foremost botanical gardens in the world. Dr. Prance is a leading expert on the rainforest.

The diaries are especially poignant now since the rubber cutters are fighting to preserve something of the original forest against the ravages of the indiscriminate destruction which still ignores the true wealth of the region – its almost incomprehensible variety of species. It is a tale of humanity and the natural order working together in the midst of greed and ignorance. Ghillean Prance enhances the text with his own contemporary photographs and identifies the fungi, plants and animals which are mentioned in the pages of the diaries.

ISBN 978-0-907791-16-4 Illustrated 104 pages 6 x 8 1/2 inches, softcover $9.95 World: except English language

“A thoroughly pleasing, easy reading, and would make a good supplement to a high school or college course that deals with economic plants of the Amazon ...

Plan on reading it in one sitting.”

George K. Rogers, Missouri Botanical Garden

John C. Yungjohann Yungjohann was a tilesetter from New York who went to seek his fortune in Brazil at the turn of the century. He was an adventurer and an artist. He died in 1930.

Birth of a Psychedelic Culture: Conversations about Leary, the Harvard Experiments, Millbrook and the Sixties

By Ram Dass & Ralph Metzner with Gary Bravo, Foreword by John Perry Barlow This extraordinary new book, shines a bright light on the emergence of the sixties culture and the experiments with mind-altering substances undertaken by Professors Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) and then-Harvard graduate student Ralph Metzner. Based on a series of conversations between Metzner and Ram Dass and recorded by psychiatrist and author Gary Bravo, this book describes their initial experiments at Harvard, the experiments after they were dismissed from Harvard, their journeys to India and their reflections on that transformative era. In addition to reviewing the experiments, the conversations offer vividly recalled descriptions of particular “trips,” with profound insights into the nature of hallucinogens and the role they can play in transcending social conditioning. No understanding of the history of the Sixties could ever be complete without a grasp of the work of Leary, Alpert, and Metzner, the cultural resistance to their experiments, and the way in which psychoactive drug use became a part of contemporary society.

ISBN 978-0-907791-38-6 Birth of a Psychedelic Culture: “Thank you for having fearlessly mapped out Illustrated a cultural history from which a lot of people, both knowingly and unknowing, 264 pages now live and are touched by.”– Alastair McIntosh, environmentalist, activist 8 1/2 x 10 inches, softcover $29.95 World: except English language

ralph metzner Ralph Metzner, author of many books, practices psychotherapy and is Professor Emeritus at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Involved in consciousness research for over 40 years and is co-founder and president of the Green Earth Foundation devoted to healing and harmonizing the relationship between humans and the Earth. www.greenearthfound.org

ram dass Ram Dass, (formerly Dr. Richard Alpert), is a world famous spiritual teacher and author of the best-seller Be Here Now. He is well known for his journeys to India and his association with the guru, Neem Karoli Baba, and founded several organizations dedicated to expanding consciousness. www.ramdass.org

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SCIENCE FICTION

MEMOIR

far out and far away

By Johnny Dolphin A highly imaginative science-fiction novel set 15,000 years into the future on a planet 15,000 light years distance from Earth that awakens the reader to the possibilities of humanity’s survival on biospheres created in space and on other planets.

The story focuses on the power struggles that surface when the techno-tribe known as Mongols prepare to depart for further galactic exploration and the people of planet Lichen must face taking control of their own planet’s technology and resources while ensuring their autonomy when an expedition en route from Earth arrives.

Lichenians fearing the intrusion of the Terrans try to persuade the Mongols to remain to help them deal with the cultural shock. When persuasion fails, they try to force the Mongols to remain by kidnapping their leader. The Terrans take advantage of the Lichenians’ reliance on theater as their cultural unifier to send in data calculated to influence their thoughts and manipulate their actions. Ultimately, a duel is fought between the Mongol and Lichenian leaders. Is it possible to find a resolution to conflict in future worlds?

ISBN 978-0-907791-40-9 287 pages 6 x 9 inches, softcover $18.00 World: except English language

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Far Out and Far Away “navigates though a fictional future of human destiny with moments of reflection on the current state of our planet’s life, technics, cultures and thinking that are viewed through the piercing retrospective eyes of a group of audacious travelers in the distant future. It’s a gem of a story.”

– Omar Fayed

PERILOUS PASSAGE: The Nervous System and the Universe in Other Words

By Terry Wilson An account of Terry Wilson’s lifetime apprenticeship under the tutelage of master shaman and artist Brion Gysin. The book focuses on events as they developed just prior to and after Gysin’s death in 1986 and details the extreme psychic “Third Mind” effects known as the Process.

Perilous Passage is a cautionary tale about the uses and abuses of personal power, an espionage thriller that includes transcribed audio hallucinations, notes, cut-ups, interview format, and collaged materials.

In this stylistically radical memoir, Wilson describes his beloved mentor as resolutely refusing to “teach” without ever ceasing to do so. Like Gysin and William Burroughs who together pioneered “Third Mind” Process, Wilson treats language itself as a parasitic invader which must be resisted, broken up and reassembled. Terry Wilson talks about the psychic techniques of The Third Mind, adventures on the road with Jim McCann, Brion Gysin’s special methods of teaching, William Burroughs and Charles Fort, ayahuasca, and the relation of memory and fiction.

Perilous Passage finalizes Wilson’s “Green Base Trilogy” which commenced with Dreams of Green Base and ‘D’ Train. His other book, Here to Go, is a classic book of interviews with Brion Gysin documenting the lifework and philosophy of this brilliant avant-garde figure.

ISBN 978-0-907791-42-3 Illustrated “Following Gysin’s death, Wilson felt isolated and cut off, and Perilous Passage 187 pages was a way out of loss and despair, a magical writing making 5 3/4 x 8 1/2 inches, softcover contact possible with other initiates, other minds.” $24.95 – Matthew Levi Stevens, Beatdom World: except English language

Johnny dolphin

terry wilson

Author Johnny Dolphin (pen name of John Allen) is both an accomplished novelist and the inventor of Biosphere 2 - an acknowledged world authority on biospherics, technics, Mars settlement, and the ethnosphere, he is a fellow of the Linnean Society, Royal Geographic Society, Explorer’s Club, the World Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is listed in the Who’s Who of the World. He is chairman of Global Ecotechnics which is engaged in designing the EARTH TO MARS project and in its Laboratory Biosphere studies of closed life systems.

For details on John Dolphin Allen’s life, see his memoir Me and the Biospheres.

Wilson currently lives in London, England, and his books are an account of his apprenticeship under the tutelage of Brion Gysin, legendary “avant garde” maestro, peerless painter/writer/inventor/mentor and accomplished shaman.

Terry spent 15 years creating this unique work which embodies and develops the radical Third Mind techniques of William Burroughs and Brion Gysin. Wilson was a friend of Gysin and Burroughs, both of whom appear as characters in the “true fiction” of Perilous Passage, and collaborated with Gysin in producing Here To Go, now recognized as a seminal work.

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SynergeticPress,

an independent publisher with offices in Santa Fe, New Mexico and London, England, has brought key and paradigm-shifting texts to readers in a variety of disciplines for over thirty years.

Whether it’s the cautionary advice of environmentalist Tony Juniper, the seminal scientific work of Vladimir Vernadsky’s Geochemistry and the Biosphere, the classic ethnobotanical treatise of Richard Evans Schultes, the authoritative biography of Albert Hofmann, the discoverer of LSD, the vivid personal recollections of Ram Dass and Ralph Metzner on the Birth of a Psychedelic Culture, or the eclectic catalog of polymath John Allen, visionary behind the Biosphere II experiment in Oracle, Arizona, Synergetic delivers the fruits of adventurous and comprehensive thinkers. Visit us at synergeticpress.com and join in our quest to better understand the world and our place within it. Sign up to our mailing list for updates on exciting new titles and events.

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