This magic mushroom moment: a fan of funny fungi sorts fact from fantasy.

• Author: Sullum, Jacob
• Position: Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom - Book review

NOT LONG AGO, at a party in Amsterdam, I was about to swallow some psilocybin mushrooms when the host interceded. Dividing the pieces into two piles, he twirled a small metal ball hanging from a thin chain above each, dangled the same "dowsing" device over my hand, and after some contemplation pointed me to the pile that was right for me. He also predicted, using amazingly precise but unverifiable numbers, exactly how the mushrooms would affect me along several different personality dimensions. This ceremony, akin to an unsolicited palm, aura, or astrological chart reading, did not enhance my mushroom experience.

If you, like me, prefer your shrooms without the New Age baggage, Andy Letcher's Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom (HarperCollins) is for you. Letcher, a British writer and musician with a doctorate in ecology and another in religious/cultural studies, is careful to separate the truth about his subject from a "fantastical history ... dreamed up on the basis of wishful thinking and overworked evidence." Without dismissing the potential for mushroom-assisted mystical experiences, Letcher rejects the idea that psychoactive fungi inevitably lead people in a specific spiritual or ideological direction. At the same time, he scolds politicians for overreacting to a practice that poses minimal risks and brings much-needed "enchantment" to quotidian life.

Letcher emphasizes that the meaning of mushrooming, like that of other drug experiences, is "culturally contingent." In the 1960s, Americans and Europeans began actively seeking an experience they had until then equated with poisoning, reinterpreting effects that were once treated as signs of insanity or imminent death as an opportunity to explore inner worlds and see the outer one in a new light. Letcher's witty, entertaining, and surprising book tells the fascinating story of how this happened, chronicling the contributions of explorers, naturalists, mycologists, philosophers, authors, charlatans, rock musicians, and psychedelic visionaries.

Some of the facts Letcher confirms are at least as strange as the legends he debunks. Siberians, for instance, really do have a history of consuming fly agaric mushrooms not only directly but also "distilled via human kidneys." Letcher speculates that they discovered the psychoactive properties of the mushroom itself and the urine excreted by people who have eaten it by observing the antics of reindeer, who in the winter supplement...