BOOKS // The Roots and Branches of our Family Tree
For our Kith & Kin issue, we recommend a host of books that push the boundaries of our understanding and open our minds and hearts to our beautiful, interconnected world: its past, present, and future. // HSB
Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our World, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures
by Merlin Sheldrake
EXCERPT //
When you come upon such a perfectly English name as Merlin Sheldrake, the Harry Potter imaginary isn’t far from your mind. In Entangled Life, we are in the House of Hufflepuff. Sheldrake, a handsome, tousle-haired fungal phenom, has written a page-turner of a book that is going to blow your mind, whether or not you choose to imbibe the magic mushroom Psilocybe cubensis: You’re never going to look at a portobello the same way. While deeply researched, it’s Sheldrake’s personal connection to his subject matter that makes this book a delight. You may or may not find it interesting that lichens are actually the combination of several species of both photosynthetic and non-photosynthetic organisms. But you’ve got to love a chapter titled “Radical Mycology,” which begins, “I lay naked in a mound of decomposing wood chips and was buried up to my neck by the spadeful. It was hot, and the steam smelled of cedar and the fust of old books.” With our culture currently focused on the apocalyptic zombie story The Last of Us, in which a mutation in the Ophiocordyceps fungus allows it to take over human brains as it already does for ants, it’s a fine time to sit down with a tome that will give you insight into how fungus creates life from death in seemingly infinite ways. Rather than judge fungi by human standards, Sheldrake wants us to see fungi for who they are—our planetary kin—and the possible solution to any number of our current environmental, medical, and cultural problems.//
For full text and images, consider reading RQ in print, on a Sunday afternoon, sun streaming through your window, coffee in hand, and nary a phone alert within sight or in earshot… just fine words, fine design, and the opportunity to make a stitch in time. // Subscribe or buy a single issue today. // Print is dead. Long live print. //