Entangled Life : : how Fungi Make our Worlds, Change our Minds & Shape our Futures

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	579.5 Sh	4-week checkout	Due 04-04-2024
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	579.5 Sh	4-week checkout	Due 04-26-2024
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / Science & Nature / General / Sheldrake, Merlin	4-week checkout	Due 04-25-2024
Pittsfield Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / Science & Nature / General / Sheldrake, Merlin	4-week checkout	Due 05-09-2024
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / Science & Nature / General / Sheldrake, Merlin	4-week checkout	Due 04-23-2024

Introduction: What is it like to be a fungus? -- A lure -- Living labyrinths -- The intimacy of strangers -- Mycelial minds -- Before roots -- Wood wide webs -- Radical mycology -- Making sense of fungi -- Epilogue: This compost.
"Living at the border between life and non-life, fungi use diverse cocktails of potent enzymes and acids to disassemble some of the most stubborn substances on the planet, turning rock into soil and wood into compost, allowing plants to grow. Fungi not only help create soil, they send out networks of tubes that enmesh roots and link plants together in the "Wood Wide Web." Fungi also drive many long-standing human fascinations: from yeasts that cause bread to rise and orchestrate the fermentation of sugar into alcohol; to psychedelic fungi; to the mold that produces penicillin and revolutionized modern medicine. And we can partner with fungi to heal the damage we've done to the planet. Fungi are already being used to make sustainable building materials and wearable leather, but they can do so much more. Fungi can digest many stubborn and toxic pollutants from crude oil to human-made polyurethane plastics and the explosive TNT. They can grow food from renewable sources: edible mushrooms can be grown on anything from plant waste to cigarette butts. And some fungi's antiviral compounds might be able to ease the colony collapse of bees. Merlin Sheldrake's revelatory introduction to this world will show us how fungi, and our relationships with them, are more astonishing than we could have imagined. Bringing to light science's latest discoveries and ingeniously parsing the varieties and behaviors of the fungi themselves, he points us toward the fundamental questions about the nature of intelligence and identity this massively diverse, little understood kingdom provokes"-- Provided by publisher.

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Life Underground submitted by amy on June 11, 2022, 10:52am An engaging walk through some remarkable fungi-related information, projects, and current research by an expert in the field named Merlin Sheldrake. That alone is worth the trip! But it will also change the way you look at the relationship between plants and animals and leave you a bit more optimistic about the state of life (and death) on earth. Also, he literally eats his words. (Seriously: It's on YouTube.)

Nerd Out on Fungi submitted by pjaynes on July 1, 2023, 12:35pm Readers will definitely be able to tell how much Sheldrake cares about the fungi he writes about, and that makes his writing incredibly engaging. I think the audiobook is particularly worthwhile, especially if you're a fan of the Ologies podcast. It has the same vibe of a really smart friend nerding out on their work. This book also pairs well with The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben.