Friday, November 11, 2011

Slayers, Saviors, Servants, and Sex

Slayers, Saviors, Servants, and Sex: An Expose of Kingdom Fungi by David Moore.

No, it's not an exciting romance or adventure thriller but a nonfiction book about fungi by a mycologist from The University of Manchester.  It's an easy, short (152pp), often humorous read that will get you thinking about fungi and maybe a little more interested in them.  I've loved mushrooms for a long time.  I used to collect boletus up at the lake in summer and was thrilled with all the mushrooms at UC Santa Cruz.  Moore doesn't just talk about mushrooms but about molds like penicillin and other members of the kingdom, about its very long history, and about fungi as offering a solution for many of our problems today.  Fungi are the ultimate cleaner uppers, the decayers, so that they should be looked to for bioremediation, rather than the bacteria.