Item #67936 The Serpent and The Rainbow. Voodoo, Wade DAVIS.

The Serpent and The Rainbow.

New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1985. First Edition. Hardcover. Large octavo. 298pp. Quarter purple cloth w/ purple papered boards, silver title, etc. to spine, biblio and index. "A Harvard scientist's astonishing journey into the Secret Society of Haitian Voodoo, Zombis and Magic". From the publisher: "In April 1982, Wade Davis, a Harvard ethnobotanist and plant explorer, arrived in Haiti to investigate two documented cases of zombis— people who had reappeared in Haitian society years after they had been officially declared dead and had been buried. Davis had been privately commissioned by American medical researchers who believed that zombification was caused by a powerful sedative, a drug that might revolutionize the practice of surgical anesthesiology. This is the story of how Wade Davis not only discovered the formula of the zombi drug and brought it back to the United States for testing, but also penetrated the vodoun mystique deeply enough to place zombification in its proper context within vodoun culture. In the course of his investigation Davis came to realize that the story of vodoun is the history of Haiti from the African origins of its people to the successful Haitian independence movement, down to the present day, where vodoun culture is, in effect, the government of Haiti's countryside. 'The Serpent and the Rainbow' combines anthropological investigation with a remarkable personal adventure to illuminate and finally explain a phenomenon that has long fascinated Americans." Some general wear and minor marks from handling to covers, light rubbing and bumping to edges and spine ends, tiny tear in to fore-edge of top board. Page edges lightly thumbed, bookshop label on front pastedown. No internal markings - a clean, solid VG copy in VG dust jacket (Dust jacket has light shelf-wear, a little chafing at head and tail of spine, not price clipped. Now in protective mylar cover). Item #67936
ISBN: 0671502476

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