Pollan is always an entertaining writer, and a deep thinker with a light touch ... it's a trip - engrossing, eye-opening, mind altering.

This fascinating insight into our relationship with mind-altering plants weaves personal experimentation with cultural history ... Pollan is the perfect guide through this sometimes controversial territory; curious, careful and, as his book progresses, increasingly open minded.

Expert storytelling ... Pollan masterfully elevates a series of big questions about drugs, plants and humans that are likely to leave readers thinking in new ways.

Brilliant, compulsively readable ... Pollan's storytelling is deft, forthright and fascinating.

Like it or not, we are undergoing a drugs revolution ... thankfully Pollan is here to guide us through this putative challenge ... [this] relatable, middle class New York plant fancier might be the ideal standard bearer for today's calmer, more scientific approach to the subject.

Pollan's intertwining of reportage, citizen science and historical scholarship is a delightful and informative read ... [he] has a rational optimism that might tempt even the most sober and sceptical to try to broaden their horizons.

Pollan is a gentle, generous writer.

Michael Pollan weaves tales of drug experimentation into a historical account of our long relationship with them.

This Is Your Mind on Plants is witty, entertaining and polite, but it is not trivial. Subtly but assuredly, Pollan argues that which plants (and fungi) we are allowed and how depends, consciously or otherwise, on the interests of power.

The descriptions of London's coffee house culture and Honoré de Balzac's barbarous habit of ingesting dry coffee grounds to fuel all-night scribbling sessions are worth the book's price alone ... The book is really about the relation between each plant and the humans who consume it, tackled in a non-judgmental and objective way that seeks to dispel the ignorance, prejudice and demonisation they attract.

Fascinating and occasionally terrifying ... His opium chapter is mesmerising.

A tour around three substances: caffeine, mescaline and opium. The first is legal, the others remain mostly illegal. Pollan offers us rich historical contexts for them that are often surprising.

Every now and then to be put in touch with what really matters - what could be more important than that?

One of the most interesting books I've read this year.

A brilliant performance - accessible, playful and scholarly, turning conventional history on its head and approaching it in a new way.

Chalmers posits that virtual reality will not only be commonplace, but it'll be as valid as our genuine reality. We'll interact with virtual objects, which will replace screen-based computing. We'll spend much of our lives in virtual environments - come the next pandemic, we might be hanging out in simulate worlds, not on Zoom

The future, too, is the subject of David Chalmers's Reality +. Rather than scoffing at Mark Zuckerberg's metaversal adventures, Chalmers gives due consideration to what the rise of virtual worlds could mean for the real one-and whether, after a certain point, they'll even be distinguishable.

Chalmers is very clever because [in Reality+] he's managed to rehearse many of the key arguments that you would encounter in most philosophy courses, but through that lens of virtual reality... It genuinely is thought-provoking (or virtual thought-provoking). It's well-written too

Scull delivers a remarkable history of psychiatry. The final section is a devastatingly effective chronicle of the rise of psychopharmacology and its tendency to regard all mental illnesses as potentially treatable with the right medication. This sweeping and comprehensive survey is an impressive feat

A carefully researched history of psychiatry, it provides a critical assessment of the psychiatric enterprise. In the rush to find cures for psychiatric illnesses, Scull believes that there has been a disappointing lack of focus on patients

A compelling argument for why we should be doing less and doing it better... This comforting, calm book is filled with sensible, practical ideas

Burkeman offers practical solutions to problems that might otherwise seem too monolithic to disassemble

Oliver Burkeman's Guardian feature was called "This Column Will Change Your Life". The wisdom of this book could do the same

[A] brilliant, comforting time-management guide

Kind of cool