Carlos Castaneda faked an anthropology classic, then built a cult

Carlos Castaneda’s 1968 book The Teachings of Don Juan recounted his apprenticeship to a peyote-dosing Yaqui shaman named don Juan. The University of California Press published it as anthropology; it became an international bestseller and drew fans from John Lennon and Joni Mitchell to George Lucas and Octavio Paz. Then a 1973 Time exposé revealed that …