5.0
challenging informative inspiring mysterious medium-paced

This book was a challenge, but it was incredible and inspiring as well. Occasionally I got bogged down by so much information that I had to pause and reorient my brain, but that’s just because there is so much to talk about. This book is crammed with the pure science of mycology, but more than that it covers dozens of stories of fungus as culture (and culture as fungus?). We’ve got psychedelics, symbiosis, agriculture, community science, culinary arts, fermentation, medicine, and Star Trek. It would be hard to read this and not feel at least some shred of optimism that fungus might just save the world.