Since book shoppers who visit the Destination: Books booth like to chat about mushrooms, we are always examining new and different books on the topic. Here’s a brief rundown of what we will be serving on our book table at the Freedom Farmer’s Market on Saturday, June 26, 2021.
Merlin Sheldrake's Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change our Minds & Shape our Futures. In a recent interview in Sun Magazine, Sheldrake, who has a PhD in tropical ecology explains the invaluable role that fungi play in the plant world as 90 percent of plants depend on the symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationship between plant and fungi. This book further explains this amazing, often hidden, and important world. People often point at the book and rave about it.
Doug Bierend’s In Search of Mycrotopia: Citizen Science, Fungi Fanatics and the Untapped Potential of Mushrooms. Bierend’s book begins with an explanation of what fungi are and how they have been viewed by the mainstream culture. He then deep dives into the rise of the underground mycelium culture, which is having significant impact (like carrying multiple mushroom books at farmer’s markets).
Tradd Cotter’s Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycroremediation: Simple to Advanced Techniques for Indoor and Outdoor Cultivation. Cotter who heads a laboratory and research space near Greenville, South Carolina has written a comprehensive how-to book to take you from mushroom eater to a mushroom grower. This gorgeously printed book is deep in detail with many illustrations and photographs.
Mike Jay’s Mescaline: A Global History of the First Psychedelic. Although mescaline is cactus-based and not a fungus-based psychedelic like psilocybin, this book from Yale University Press gives a cultural history of these psychedelics which are becoming more and more prevalent because of the rising possibilities of their medicinal value especially in treating mental health problems. We will also have a copy of Michael Pollan's How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depressions and Transcendence.
Mushroom market photography by Destination's Denise Casey.