In the Com­pany of Mush­rooms: A Biologist's Tale

"We might slice them into a salad, sa­vor them in a sauce, won­der at their power to in­tox­i­cate or poi­son, mar­vel at their mul­ti­far­i­ous pres­ence in the forest–but few of us re­al­ize that mush­rooms, humbly thriv­ing on de­cay, are cru­cial to life on Earth as we know it. In this book a dis­tin­guished bi­ol­o­gist, long in­trigued by the se­cret life of fungi, re­veals the power of these cu­ri­ous organisms–not quite an­i­mal, not quite plant–to en­chant and in­struct, to nour­ish and make way for all sorts of su­pe­rior forms of na­ture. In a style at once learned and quirky, per­sonal and com­mand­ing, Elio Schaechter im­parts the fas­ci­nat­ing minu­tiae and the weighty im­pli­ca­tions of his subject–a pri­mar­ily mi­cro­scopic life form that nonethe­less ac­counts for up to two tons of mat­ter for every hu­man on the planet. He shows us how fungi, the great de­com­posers, re­cy­cle most of the world's veg­etable mat­ter – from a blade of grass to a strap­ping tree – and thus pre­vent us from sink­ing un­der ever-ac­cu­mu­lat­ing masses of de­cay­ing mat­ter."

Elio Schaechter – 1997