The idea behind this book and the description of its in content laid out in the inside cover caused me to immediately purchase it. Sigmund Freud snorting lines in his laboratory? William James falling in love with nitrous oxide? I was sold. And while I did appreciate the lessons taught behind the culture surrounding these novel drugs and the occasional wild story, I found this book rather boring. I am unsure whether my boredom stemmed from the fanciful idea of what I thought Jay’s book would cover substantively, or if the book itself it just a banal insight into household name scientists and their nescience towards the dangerousness of the drugs they are exploring. My mundane feelings toward this book could also be a combination of both prongs: Pyschonauts fell flat because my high expectations were met with trite history and lackluster stories.

The reason I had higher expectations for Pyschonauts most likely originated from the book’s cover—inside and out—and the title itself. The trippy image of William James on the outside cover and the beautiful waves of color on the inside caused me to believe I would be entering the land of not only stimulants, but plenty of history behind psychedelics. My disappointment grew as I found myself halfway through the book and I was still stuck in nitrous oxide abuse occurring in the 19^th century. And because of the pysch prefix in the title, Jay could have done away with certain portions of the book—instead installing more facts about users and creators of hallucinogens.

Now, before you decide to never read Pyschonauts, I must add that I did learn more about the history of some drugs—like the accidental creation of LSD toward the end of the book—along with a few stories that captured my complete attention—the historical context of Jekyll and Hyde and short quips explaining the origins of certain hallucinogenic drugs, for me, saved this book from being the most disappointing thing since Ridley Scott’s Napoleon (I still love Joaquin Phoenix). With that, I leave you, the reader of my reviews, to decide whether Pyschonauts is worth a read. I truly have little issue with the book, but I felt led astray by all the aspects that presented Jay’s book as a “trip through time,” enjoying a front row seat to the founding fathers of all things psychedelics, and was met instead with an overwhelmingly benign history of drugs that are still pharmaceutically abused today.