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Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures
Top of the pile
92
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
89/100Critics
86/100Scholars
100/100Author:
Merlin Sheldrake
Publisher:
Random House
Date:
May 12, 2020
Fungi throw our concepts of individuality and even intelligence into question. They are metabolic masters, earth makers, and key players in most of lifeâs processes. They can change our minds, heal our bodies, and even help us remediate environmental disaster. By examining fungi on their own terms, Sheldrake reveals how these extraordinary organismsâand our relationships with themâare changing our understanding of how life works.
What The Reviewers Say
... ebullient and ambitious.
While fungi are easy sources of wonder, getting to the wonder means understanding the basics, which can be arcane in the case of fungi. Sheldrake carefully explains the details in clever, affable prose. His book has a host of other strengths as well. It emphasizes the openness and indeterminacy of mycology, a vastly understudied field, through honest depictions of scientists in the lab and field trying to puzzle out fungi’s unexplained behavior. Sheldrake also shows how culture shapes scientific knowledge.
More than anything else, Entangled Life is an ode to other ways of being.
...[a] rich and colorful portrait of fungi ...Mr. Sheldrake manages the immense subject of mycology by taking a literary approach. He looks at fungi through a variety of themes and analogies, and in the process is able to disclose so much more about these enigmatic organisms.
