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Book Summary and Reviews of Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake

Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake

Entangled Life

How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures

by Merlin Sheldrake

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  • Published:
  • May 2020, 368 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

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.

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.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"[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

"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

This information about Entangled Life was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Merlin Sheldrake

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.

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