A review by cantordustbunnies
Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World by Paul Stamets

5.0

I was deeply impressed by Stamets' level of devotion to this field. It is more of a religious calling for him. It is pretty rare to encounter a professional who will so openly share their knowledge in a manner that is designed to be as maximally beneficial to the audience as possible and his clear desire for others to be successful is refreshing. His enthusiasm is infectious and he goes out of his way to encourage participation by making things easy to understand without oversimplification. He seems to be very quirky yet morally upright and a highly enterprising individual. A lot of the book's charm is in the author's personality which peeps through the text and his occasionally whimsically humorous captions on illustrations. While largely scientific, he also expresses some spiritual beliefs which are endearing in their idiosyncrasy. The book itself is highly informative and user friendly and his optimistic faith in the power of fungi (and nature more generally) is joyfully idealistic if not a little on the "new age" or "hippie" side of things. Some people could potentially get turned off with all the mycelium hugging and environmentalism but the information within is useful, real, and scientifically sound and I found his eccentricities to increase my appreciation for the book and enjoyment of the material within which under a different author could have been very dry indeed.