Book Review: In Search of Mycotopia by Doug Bierend
In Search of Mycotopia
Citizen Science, Fungi Fanatics, and the Untapped Potential of Mushrooms
Doug Bierend
Pages:336 pages
Size:6 x 9 inch
Publisher:Chelsea Green Publishing
Pub. Date:March 10, 2021
ISBN:9781603589796
**This is an ARC provided by NetGalley for book reviews.**
Fungi, Citizen Science, and Mycoculture
A journalist goes on a tour to find the beginnings and diversity of fungi counterculture and mycological movements. He meets citizen scientists, ecologists, entrepreneurs, researchers, enthusiasts, cultivators, and fungi growers to generate a comprehensive and vivid account of the modern mycological universe. Fans of the recent Merlin Sheldrake’s Entangled Life should find this enthusiastic romp across mycofestivals and underground mycoculture laboratories.
The first thing you notice about the book is Bierend’s vivid usage of alliteration in describing the world of fungi along with its people. Secondly, the book is a cornucopia of interesting fungi-related terms with the prefix ‘myco-’. Fungi are everywhere, connected to everything. You can be an ‘anarchomycologist’ working to disrupt the capitalist chain by helping communities grow shrooms, cultivate strains in homegrown labs, and generate a communal interest in fungi bringing local communities together. The book follows the stories of many such entrepreneurs. Mycelial metaphors will follow you often as you meet foresters who use mycoremediation processes in forests suffering from fires or in clean up of groundwater pollution or brewers and fermenters using yeast to make the art of fermentation accessible to everyone. We are introduced to the Chilean mycologist Giuliana Furci’s Fundacion Fungi and their work in using fungi to modulate environmental policies in Chile. A fine example of translating science into policy.
The readers get plenty of introductory information about the kingdom fungi along with various types of mushrooms, their cellular structure, their physical appearance, their uses, identification, and their role in folklore and cultures (called ethnomycology). The fascinating world of slime molds and their complex behavior get a nod too in the book.
There is something for every fungi enthusiast in this book. Even though the bulk of the fungi movements and people you meet here are based in America it opens a whole new dimension of the citizen science world for you to explore.
