Edmund Wade Davis (born December 14, 1953) is a Canadian cultural anthropologist, ethnobotanist, author, and photographer. Davis came to prominence with his 1985 best-selling book The Serpent and the Rainbow about the zombies of Haiti. He is professor of anthropology and the BC Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of British Columbia. Early life, family, and education Davis was born in West Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He holds degrees in anthropology and biology and received his Ph.D. in ethnobotany, all from Harvard University. In 1974, at age 20, he crossed the Darién Gap on foot in the company of the English author and amateur explorer, Sebastian Snow. Career Davis is an ethnographer, writer, photographer, and filmmaker, he also is a licensed river guide and has worked as park ranger and a forestry engineer. Anthropology and ethnobotany Mostly through the Harvard Botanical Museum, he spent more than three years in the Amazon and Andes as a plant explorer, living among fifteen indigenous groups in eight Latin American nations while making some 6,000 botanical collections. He also conducted ethnographic fieldwork among several indigenous societies of northern Canada. His work later took him to Haiti to investigate folk preparations implicated in the creation of zombies, an assignment that led to his writing Passage of Darkness (1988) and The Serpent and the Rainbow (1986), an international bestseller. The book was used loosely as the basis of a Wes Craven horror film, The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988). Other books by Davis include Penan: Voice for the Borneo Rain Forest (1990), Shadows in the Sun (1998), Nomads of the Dawn (1995), The Clouded Leopard (1998), Rainforest (1998), Light at the Edge of the World (2001), The Lost Amazon (2004), Grand Canyon (2008), Book of Peoples of the World (ed. 2008), and One River (1996), which was nominated for the 1997 Governor General's Literary Award for nonfiction. His books have been translated into fourteen languages, including Basque, Serbian, Japanese, and Malay. He has published 1800 popular articles on subjects ranging from Haitian vodoun, Amazonian myth and religion, the traditional use of psychotropic drugs, the ethnobotany of South American Indians, as well as, how COVID-19 has signaled the end of the American era. Davis has written for National Geographic, Newsweek, Premiere, Outside, Omni, Harpers, Fortune, Men's Journal, Condé Nast Traveler, Natural History, Scientific American, National Geographic Traveler, The New York Times, Wall