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Wonderful Book for for learning about Mushrooms!sonofabear

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Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures Paperback – April 13, 2021

by Merlin Sheldrake (Author)

8,557 ratings

#1 Best Seller in Mushrooms in Biological Sciences

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THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WITH OVER ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE

A “brilliant [and] entrancing” (The Guardian) journey into the hidden lives of fungi—the great connectors of the living world—and their astonishing and intimate roles in human life, with the power to heal our bodies, expand our minds, and help us address our most urgent environmental problems.

“Grand and dizzying in how thoroughly it recalibrates our understanding of the natural world.”—Ed Yong, author of An Immense World

ONE OF PEOPLE’S BEST BOOKS OF THE 2020S • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, BBC Science Focus, The Daily Mail, Geographical, The Times, The Telegraph, New Statesman, London Evening Standard, Science Friday

When we think of fungi, we likely think of mushrooms. But mushrooms are only fruiting bodies, analogous to apples on a tree. Most fungi live out of sight, yet make up a massively diverse kingdom of organisms that supports and sustains nearly all living systems. Fungi provide a key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways we think, feel, and behave.

In the first edition of this mind-bending book, Sheldrake introduced us to this mysterious but massively diverse kingdom of life. This exquisitely designed volume, abridged from the original, features more than one hundred full-color images that bring the spectacular variety, strangeness, and beauty of fungi to life as never before.

Fungi throw our concepts of individuality and even intelligence into question. They are metabolic masters, earth makers, and key players in most of life’s 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 organisms—and our relationships with them—are changing our understanding of how life works.

Winner of the Wainwright Prize, the Royal Society Science Book Prize, and the Guild of Food Writers Award • Shortlisted for the British Book Award • Longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize

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Mycology;entangled life;nature books;biology gifts;books for dad;gifts for nature lovers

Editorial Reviews

Review

“[An] ebullient and ambitious exploration . . . Reading [Entangled Life] left me not just moved but altered, eager to disseminate its message of what fungi can do.”—The New York Times

“A gorgeous book of literary nature writing, ripe with insight and erudition. . . . Food for the soul.”—The Wall Street Journal

“An encapsulating look at the importance of fungi to our ecosystem and world—as key players in biological processes, as crucial healing instruments and more. You’ll never look at mushrooms the same way again.”—People

“Nearly every page of this book contained either an observation so interesting or a turn of phrase so lovely that I was moved to slow down, stop, and re-read. . . . [Entangled Life] reminded me that fungi are, like the Universe, sublime.”—Science

“An exuberant introduction to the biology, ecology, climatology, and psychopharmacology of the earth’s ‘metabolic wizards.’”—Harpers Magazine

“A poetic, mind-bending tour of the fungal world.”—Scientific American

“Wondrous . . . Humans should consider fungi among the greatest of earth’s marvels.”—Time (Books of the Year)

“An astonishing book.”—The Observer

“Completely mind-blowing.”—The Sunday Times

“Grand and dizzying in how thoroughly it recalibrates our understanding of the natural world.”—Ed Yong, author of An Immense World

“I fell in love with this book. Merlin Sheldrake is a scientist with the imagination of a poet and a beautiful writer.”—Michael Pollan, author of How to Change Your Mind (Bay Area Book Festival, 2020)

“A magical journey deep into the roots of Nature by an expert storyteller . . . a must-read.”—Paul Stamets, author of Mycelium Running

“Reading this book, I felt surrounded by a web of wonder. The natural world is more fantastic than any fantasy, so long as you have the means to perceive it. This book provides the means.”—Jaron Lanier, author of You Are Not a Gadget

“Urgent, astounding, and necessary.”—Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk

“Dazzling, vibrant, vision changing.”—Robert Macfarlane, author of Underland

“Gorgeous.”—Margaret Atwood, author of The Testaments

About the Author

Merlin Sheldrake is a biologist and author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures, a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller and winner of the Royal Society Book Prize and the Wainwright Prize. Sheldrake is a research associate of the Vrije University Amsterdam and works with the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks and the Fungi Foundation. A keen brewer and fermenter, he is fascinated by the relationships that arise between humans and more-than-human organisms.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1.

A Lure

Who’s pimping who?—Prince

A heap of Piedmont white truffles (Tuber magnatum) sat on the scales on a check-patterned rag. They were scruffy, like unwashed stones; irregular, like potatoes; socketed, like skulls. Two kilograms: €12,000. Their sweet funk filled the room, and in this aroma was their value. It was unabashed and quite unlike anything else: a lure, thick and confusing enough to get lost in.

It was early November, the height of truffle season, and I had traveled to Italy to join two truffle hunters working out of the hills around Bologna. I was lucky. A friend of a friend knew a man who dealt truffles. The dealer had agreed to set me up with his two best hunters, who in turn had consented to let me go out with them. White-truffle hunters are famously secretive. These fungi have never been domesticated and can only be found in the wild.

Truffles are the underground fruiting bodies of several types of mycorrhizal fungi. For most of the year, truffle fungi exist as mycelial networks, sustained in part by the nutrients they obtain from the soil and also by the sugars they draw from plant roots. However, their subterranean habitat confronts them with a basic problem. Truffles are spore-producing organs, analogous to the seed-producing fruit of a plant. Spores evolved to allow fungi to disperse themselves, but underground their spores can’t be caught by air currents and are invisible to the eyes of animals.

Their solution is to smell. But to smell above the olfactory racket of a forest is no small task. Forests are crisscrossed with smells, each a potential fascination or distraction to an animal nose. Truffles must be pungent enough for their scent to penetrate the layers of soil and enter the air, distinctive enough for an animal to take note amid the ambient smellscape, and delicious enough for that animal to seek it out, dig it up, and eat it. Every visual disadvantage that truffles face—being entombed in the soil, difficult to spot once unearthed, and visually unappealing once spotted—they make up for with smell.

Once eaten, a truffle’s job is done: An animal has been lured into exploring the soil and recruited to carry the fungus’s spores off to a new place and deposit them in its feces. A truffle’s allure is thus the outcome of hundreds of thousands of years of evolutionary entanglement with animal tastes. Natural selection will favor truffle fungi that match the preferences of their finest spore dispersers. Truffles with better “chemistry” will attract animals more successfully than those with worse. Like the orchids that mimic the appearance of sexually receptive female bees, truffles provide a depiction of animal tastes—an evolutionary portrait in scent of animal fascination.

I was in Italy because I wanted to be drawn underground by a fungus into the chemical world in which it lived. We are ill-equipped to participate in the chemical lives of fungi, but ripe truffles speak a language so piercing and simple that even we can understand it. In doing so, these fungi include us for a moment within their chemical ecology. How should we think about the torrents of interaction that occur between organisms underground? How should we understand these spheres of more-than-human communication? Perhaps running after a dog hot on the trail of a truffle and burying my face in the soil was as close as I could get to the chemical tug and promise that fungi use to conduct so many aspects of their lives.

The human sense of smell is extraordinary. Our eyes can distinguish several million colors, our ears can distinguish half a million tones, but our noses can distinguish well over a trillion different odors. Humans can detect virtually all volatile chemicals ever tested. We outperform rodents and dogs in detecting certain odors, and we can follow scent trails. Smells feature in our choice of sexual partners and in our ability to detect fear, anxiety, or aggression in others. And smell is woven into the fabric of our memories; it is common for people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder to have olfactory flashbacks.

Noses are finely tuned instruments. Your olfactory sense can split complex mixtures into their constituent chemicals, just as a prism can split white light into its constituent colors. To do this, it must detect the precise arrangement of atoms within a molecule. Mustard smells mustardy because of bonds between nitrogen, carbon, and sulfur. Fish smells fishy because of bonds between nitrogen and hydrogen. Bonds between carbon and nitrogen smell metallic and oily.

The ability to detect and respond to chemicals is a primordial sensory ability. Most organisms use their chemical senses to explore and make sense of their environment. Plants, fungi, and animals all use similar types of receptors to detect chemicals. When molecules bind to these receptors, they trigger a signaling cascade: One molecule triggers a cellular change, which triggers a bigger change, and so on. In this way, small causes can ripple into large effects: Human noses can detect some compounds at as low a concentration as thirty-four thousand molecules in one square centimeter, the equivalent of a single drop of water in twenty thousand Olympic swimming pools.

For an animal to experience a smell, a molecule must land on their olfactory epithelium. In humans, this is a membrane up and behind the nose. The molecule binds to a receptor, and nerves fire. The brain gets involved as chemicals are identified or trigger thoughts and emotional responses. Fungi are equipped with different kinds of bodies. They don’t have noses or brains. Instead, their entire surface behaves like an olfactory epithelium. A mycelial network is one large chemically sensitive membrane: A molecule can bind to a receptor anywhere on its surface and trigger a signaling cascade that alters fungal behavior.

Fungi live their lives bathed in a rich field of chemical information. Truffle fungi use chemicals to communicate to animals their readiness to be eaten; they also use chemicals to communicate with plants, animals, other fungi—and themselves. It isn’t possible to understand fungi without exploring these sensory worlds, but they are hard for us to interpret. Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Like fungi, we spend much of our lives being drawn toward things. We know what it is to be attracted or repelled. Through smell, we can participate in the molecular discourse fungi use to organize much of their existence.

In human history, truffles have long been associated with sex. The word for truffle in many languages translates to “testicle,” as in the old Castilian turmas de tierra, or earth’s testicles. Truffle fungi have evolved to make animals giddy because their lives depend on it. As I spoke with Charles Lefevre, a truffle scientist and cultivator in Oregon, about his work with the Périgord black truffle, he broke off: “Funny—as I’m saying this I am ‘bathing’ in the virtual aroma of Tuber melanosporum. It’s as if a cloud of it is filling my office, but there are currently no truffles here. These olfactory flashbacks are common with truffles in my experience. They can even include visual and emotional memories.”

In France, Saint Anthony—the patron saint of lost objects—is regarded as the patron saint of truffles, and truffle masses are celebrated in his honor. Prayers do little to stop the skulduggery. Cheap truffles are stained or flavored to pass them off as their more valuable cousins. Prized truffle forests are targeted by truffle poachers. Expertly trained dogs worth thousands of euros are stolen. Poisoned meat is strewn around woods to kill the dogs of rival hunters. In 2010, in a crime of passion, a French truffle farmer, Laurent Rambaud, shot dead a truffle thief he encountered while patrolling his truffle orchards during the night. Following his arrest, two hundred and fifty supporters marched in support of Rambaud’s right to defend his crop, angry at the rise in thefts of both truffles and truffle dogs. The deputy head of the Tricastin truffle growers’ union told La Provence newspaper that he had advised fellow producers never to patrol their fields with a gun because “the temptation is too high.” Lefevre put it well: “Truffles bring out the dark side of people. It’s like money lying on the ground, but it’s perishable and mercurial.”

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House Trade Paperbacks
Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 13, 2021
Edition ‏ : ‎ Reprint
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 052551032X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0525510321
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.12 x 0.79 x 7.96 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #7,874 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1 in Mushrooms in Biological Sciences
- #4 in Ecology (Books)
- #259 in Memoirs (Books)

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Customers find this book engaging and well-written, with many interesting insights and beautiful drawings throughout. They appreciate its accessibility, making it easy to understand, and praise its deep dive into the world of mushrooms and their critical role in ecology. The book's connectivity aspect receives mixed reactions, with some customers finding it mind-blowing while others find it annoyingly sensationalized.

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Readability Information quality Writing style Fungi knowledge Ecology Beauty Accessibility Connectivity

148 customers mention "Readability"145 positive3 negative

Customers find the book engaging and entertaining, describing it as a fascinating and enjoyable journey through the world of fungi.

"I really enjoyed this book. The portion on Lichens (a fascination of mine) was very good, although I wish it was a bit longer...." Read more

"This is a great read - fascinating and insightful. The author educates and entertains with humor and grace...." Read more

"This book is far more interesting than I imagined. If you have any interest in plant life and/or it’s s evolution, this is the book for you...." Read more

"...our drab mental models into the vibrant, bustling, sonorous, and pungent world that has been longing for our attention." Read more

140 customers mention "Information quality"133 positive7 negative

Customers find the book well-researched and full of interesting insights, with one customer noting how it blends personal experiences with scientific concepts and understandings.

"Authoritative discussion on how fungi are vital to our existence and have shaped human existence, from agriculture, pharmacology, forestry and..." Read more

"...Their were revelations in every chapter, some which were just changes of perspective...." Read more

"This is a great read - fascinating and insightful. The author educates and entertains with humor and grace...." Read more

"...It’s a wonderful read, packed with information." Read more

79 customers mention "Writing style"68 positive11 negative

Customers praise the writing style of the book, finding it fascinating and easy to read, with one customer noting that the prose flows beautifully.

"...Sheldrake's prose is lively and clever, but above all it is richly sensual--something you don't usually find in scientific non-fiction...." Read more

"...makes science feel especially because it’s very engaging and written in such a way that it’s isn’t just interesting facts but also it expresses the..." Read more

"This book is so well written. My only gripe is that I wish it was longer! Literally almost knocked a star for that...." Read more

"Well written, informative and eye-opening. Highly recommend this book even if you aren't into fungus." Read more

49 customers mention "Fungi knowledge"49 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's insights into fungi, noting their essential role in ecosystems and various functions, with one customer highlighting their symbiotic relationships with trees.

"...Finally, it's clear that there is a strong influence of Fungi on human beings (for instance, via yeasts and fermentation) was fascinating, and now..." Read more

"...He describes fungi in intimate detail and explains a huge chunk of the microcosm on which we, as humans, depend...." Read more

"How rich our world is because of fungi and yeast. The examples of connection helps me appreciate my connectedness to the earth and everything on it." Read more

"...It’s changed my perspective to know that fungi lives in plant roots and that networks connect w each other under ground...." Read more

15 customers mention "Ecology"15 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate how the book explores the critical role of fungi in our ecology, with one customer noting their influence on virtually every life form on earth, while another highlights their importance in nutrient cycling, medicine, and mental health.

"...have a greater understanding of the give and take, the universality of the living beings around me" Read more

"...form complex networks that influence ecosystems and interact with a wide range of organisms, including humans...." Read more

"...interesting facts but also it expresses the cultural impacts and more human sides of the topic really really well. I’m absolutely obsessed." Read more

"...to give you more insight into the relationships between fungi, other life on earth, and the importance of those relationships." Read more

14 customers mention "Beauty"14 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the beautiful drawings in the book, with one customer noting they span several pages, and another describing them as richly detailed.

"...Richly detailed and engaging, Entangled Life invites readers to rethink their understanding of nature and the interconnectedness of life...." Read more

"...Sheldrake's prose is lively and clever, but above all it is richly sensual--something you don't usually find in scientific non-fiction...." Read more

"...Their abilities and design are so awesome and functionally complex, that the notion.. that they self-assembled via undirected processes becomes..." Read more

"...I loved the illustration and all the work that was put into it and it’s a great piece of literature if you know anyone who’s a fun-guy!" Read more

10 customers mention "Accessibility"10 positive0 negative

Customers find the book very accessible and easy to understand, with one customer noting it's convenient to flip through and reference.

"...And as a high school senior, this book was both very accessible to somebody with minimal knowledge about the subject and very inspiring for somebody..." Read more

"...you might be in biology or fungi, I guarantee you will find him easy to follow and you’ll come to appreciate how valuable and necessary are fungi to..." Read more

"...Paperback- this version, easier to flip thru & reference & overall the most enjoyable version IMO...." Read more

"...This work was accessible and poignantly written. I have recommended it to many friends!" Read more

23 customers mention "Connectivity"16 positive7 negative

Customers have mixed reactions to the book's connectivity themes, with some appreciating the interconnectedness of life and finding it a mind-altering read, while others find it annoyingly sensationalized.

"...readers to rethink their understanding of nature and the interconnectedness of life...." Read more

"Everything is more connected than you know...." Read more

"I found Entangled Life annoyingly sensationalized, dealing with over-hyped topics like “zombie fungi”, truffle hunting, slime molds in mazes..." Read more

"ENTANGLED LIFE could change your life. It is a must read for park planners, for environmental managers of all natural areas!..." Read more

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Thomas Kickler
better than a science fiction novel
Reviewed in the United States on May 17, 2025
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Authoritative discussion on how fungi are vital to our existence and have shaped human existence, from agriculture, pharmacology, forestry and anthropology

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R. Harvey
You wil never think about Fungi the same again
Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2025
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I really enjoyed this book. The portion on Lichens (a fascination of mine) was very good, although I wish it was a bit longer. Their were revelations in every chapter, some which were just changes of perspective. For instance, the revelation that mushrooms were just the fruiting bodies of underground fungal colonies brought me up short. That there are fungi that also entrap nematodes for food sometimes, was really eye opening. Also, the permeation of just about every variety of plant by Fungi, and how they even link trees together and help balance the nutrients among stands of trees. Who would have thought? Finally, it's clear that there is a strong influence of Fungi on human beings (for instance, via yeasts and fermentation) was fascinating, and now that I've read this, I see the influence of Fungi everywhere, which I suspect was the point. There were some sections that delved into philosophic and sometimes abstract ideas that didn't quite interest me, but overall this was an excellent book.

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Betty C
Fascinating and fun
Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2025
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This is a great read - fascinating and insightful.
The author educates and entertains with humor and grace. He describes fungi in intimate detail and explains a huge chunk of the microcosm on which we, as humans, depend. If you’re interested in nature, in medicine or just in how things work in the world, you won’t be disappointed.

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Katherine M. Steele
very interesting
Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2025
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How rich our world is because of fungi and yeast. The examples of connection helps me appreciate my connectedness to the earth and everything on it.

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Nancy
Great condition and excellent book
Reviewed in the United States on March 23, 2025
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This book is far more interesting than I imagined. If you have any interest in plant life and/or it’s s evolution, this is the book for you. It’s a wonderful read, packed with information.

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Amazon Customer
A book about Us All Living on Earth!
Reviewed in the United States on February 1, 2025
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Personally, and honestly, I wish I could afford, to donate a copy of ENTANGLED LIFE, to people I know they will love to learn more about our Nature on our Planet Earth, the Air we breadth, of all the elements that collaborate on our behalf! The way it was written for all of us to finally begin and understand Nature and appreciate what is going on, for our behalf! We thank you!
Michos Tzovaras

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Will Szal
Revelrous, Invigorating, Clarifying
Reviewed in the United States on June 27, 2020
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In the spirit of books like “Underland” by Robert MacFarlane (which actually features Merlin Sheldrake in his mycological splendor), “Entangled Life,” much like the dwarves arriving at Bilbo’s house, brashly pulls you, the reader, out on a rough-and-tumble adventure that engages the senses like few literary works. You’ll quickly find yourself sweaty, running alongside truffle dogs in the in the Italian countryside, brambles scratching your arms, or as a child, immersed in a giant pile of leaves, the moist scent of decomposition saturating your nostrils as you burrow down to the interface where leaves meet the earth, writhing with worms.

In his introduction, using the language of his friend and mentor David Abram, Sheldrake diffracts his narrative through the prism of phenomenology. “Our perceptions work in large part by expectations. It takes less cognitive effort to make sense of the world using preconceived images updated with a small amount of new sensory information than to constantly form entirely new perceptions from scratch…Tricked out of our expectations, we fall back on our senses."

On first glance, you might think that this is a book about fungi. And in a way, it is—as much as you might say that an oil painting is about paint and canvas. And yet, just like the painter, Sheldrake uses his medium of mycelium to illustrate not just the qualities of a natural kingdom, but to paint the icon of a new paradigm. In the world of “Entangled Life,” Sheldrake’s portraits dissolve the veil that normally crisply define the thresholds of individual organisms. Given that your corporeal subsistence as a human is reliant on yeasts (a form of fungi), both to maintain your microbiome, and to pre-digests your food, where do you end, and where does the fungal kingdom begin? Given that trees are unable to access the water and nutrients they need to thrive without mycelial networks, is it useful to refer to an individual tree as an organism, or must we expand our definition to include its fungal partners? To use the terminology of J. G. Bennett, maybe even the concept of individuality begins only at the scale of the species.

Sheldrake has PhD in ecology, and relies upon a scientific epistemology to construct and buttress his rhetoric. And yet where much of science hones in at the order of mechanism, to the degree that we lose the forrest in the trees, Sheldrake employs science in a way that invites in our somatic selves and leaves us awed by the synergies dancing our eyes and branching beneath our feet.

Like the effects of the psilocybin mushrooms which Sheldrake describes, this book can serve as a portal through our drab mental models into the vibrant, bustling, sonorous, and pungent world that has been longing for our attention.

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charles m. cartwright
Intriguing.
Reviewed in the United States on February 22, 2025
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Very interesting read.

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libro bellissimo
Reviewed in Italy on July 13, 2023
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un libro davvero interessante, stupendo

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Sahar Ansari
This book is worth every penny
Reviewed in Brazil on March 7, 2021
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This book arrived much earlier than I thought it would and in perfect condition. What is more important is that this book is amazing! I have not finished it yet, but every day I find out something cool from it..I cannot recommend this enough...

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Sahar Ansari

This book is worth every penny

Reviewed in Brazil on March 7, 2021
This book arrived much earlier than I thought it would and in perfect condition. What is more important is that this book is amazing! I have not finished it yet, but every day I find out something cool from it..I cannot recommend this enough...

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CT Chan
That fungi are everywhere
Reviewed in Singapore on July 5, 2023
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Highly informative

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Seth
One of my favourites
Reviewed in Turkey on July 5, 2024
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I never liked mushrooms, they seemed wierd to me all the time but this book changed my point of view! What an incredible content it was!

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西村尚樹
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Reviewed in Japan on May 17, 2025
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Unlocking new interests. Well written and documented. Thumbs up

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