Perhaps the latest monograph on protein-protein interactions in the genus Schizophyllum is not high on your reading list. Not only that, but if someone gives you one more “giant color treasury of mushrooms” you are going to throw away your coffee table! There are some readable, informative, and yes — even entertaining — books from the world of mycology that might be just what you need. Here are three that any fan of the fungi will appreciate.

The Fungus Fighters

The Fungus Fighters, by Richard S. Baldwin, chronicles the work of Elizabeth Hazen and Rachel Brown, who together are credited with the discovery of the first safe and effective antifungal drug — nystatin. Fungal infections are relatively rare and you may not give them much thought (after all, athlete’s foot is not the most serious of afflictions).

However, when a serious deep fungal infection strikes, it can be lethal. Fungi are eukaryotic, as are humans, so it is difficult to find drugs to attack them that won’t also attack the patient’s cells at the same time. If you like science and a bit of a mystery, you’ll enjoy reading about the dedication and hard work of these two researchers, who made an important contribution during a time when women researchers were still seldom found in the laboratory.

Mushrooms, Molds, and Miracles

Dubbed “A fascinating journey into the strange realm of the fungi — man’s greatest friends and deadliest foes,” Mushrooms, Molds, and Miracles, by Lucy Kavaler, takes the reader on a wide-ranging journey through mycological history. Well researched, and with a little something about everything fungal, Kavaler touches on brewing and bread making, toxic and edible mushrooms, the discovery of penicillin, the great potato famine, fungal biotechnology, and even extraterrestrial life.

It’s a bit dated (1965), but outside of the biotechnology parts, it does an excellent job of describing the great help, as well as the great destruction, rendered by the fungal kingdom.

Trees and Toadstools

Rodale Press published a wonderful book in 1947 called Trees and Toadstools, by M. C. Rayner. It doesn’t seem like something Rodale would touch these days, but we can be glad they did back then. The original edition was published in England in 1945.

In a concise and highly readable 85 pages, Dr. Rayner introduces the world of woodland fungi and more specifically the fungi that inhabit the roots of nearly every tree you see. Without these “fungus roots” (mycorrhizae) most trees would be in a bad way. It is long out of print, but this gem can occasionally be found in used bookstores.

References

Mushrooms, Molds, and Miracles, Lucy Kavaler, John Day Company, NY, 1965

The Fungus Fighters, Richard S. Baldwin, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 1981

Trees and Toadstools, M. C. Raynor, Rodale Press, Emmaus, PA, 1947

Note: This article first appeared at Suite101.com.

Cover of "Spiral" by Paul McEuen

Someone I follow on Twitter first clued me into the existence of Spiral a few months ago. I wish I could remember who it was so I could thank them, but alas…  Sorry. Whoever it was, I thank them for the tip because Spiral is a great read.

My first look at Spiral came at a local Barnes and Noble. I sat down with a latte and a copy of the book and managed to get through the first 20 or so pages before I had to pack up. I was hooked right from the start. After that I put a hold on it my local library. Apparently a lot of other people wanted to read it too, because I started out at number 12 of 12. After more than a month I had only made it down to 9 of 14. I just couldn’t wait any longer. I decided to spring for the iBook version ($12.99) to read it on the new iPad 2 that my employer had just got me to evaluate (to see what it could be good for in an educational setting).

Why review Spiral at a place like MycoRant? Fungi of course!

Beginning with a flashback to an indecent from World War II and fast-forwarding to the present day, McEuen (who is a professor of physics at Cornell) develops a plot revolving around a deadly fungal strain from South America that was weaponized by the infamous Japanese biological warfare outfit, Unit 731. The fungus is the imaginary Fusarium spirale. It’s dimorphic even! The mycological background provided by McEuen is spot on, and more importantly, really adds to the success of the plot. There are plenty of detailed descriptions of the book’s contents published elsewhere, and I don’t want to be a spoiler, so I won’t repeat any of that here. I will say this: the characters are good and likable (even the heartless female super-villain), there are cool nanorobots, it has excellent realistic scene settings at and around Cornell, and it offers up just the right amount of murder and mayhem.

I did wonder how the author got the idea for building a thriller around a fungal bioterror weapon. According to Dr. McEuen, “Actually, very early on in the process I got the idea of a person doing fungus-art in the woods. It just spiraled up from there. When I learned all the ways you could kill from fungi, how
could I not make use of them?” Fair enough, and a damn good idea if you ask me.

Knowing that the book had a strong connection with Cornell (it even includes a scene or two at the herbarium there), I got to thinking—I wonder if Kathie Hodge had anything to do with this? Sure enough, there is she is, front and center in the acknowledgments.

“Paul emailed one day out of the blue and asked if I’d have coffee with him,” she relates, “so he could talk to me about the fungus stuff in his novel.  The character Maggie was based partly on me–he’d read the story of my discovery of the “cyclosporin fungus” long ago (late 1990s) but had never met me.  He’d already written a draft when I met him for the first time.”

How cool is that?

“It was a pretty fun meeting, but also a bit hair-raising:  Maggie was based on just a short news article about me, but converged on my life in lots of ways. I’m also a mom with a young son, and making fungus art in the woods is something I would definitely do, and so is letterboxing. Then it transpired that he’d been crafting his book while walking a trail that literally orbited my house–but he didn’t know it was my house.  Maggie and I converged further as we talked over a year or so.  Funny–one of the early reviews mentioned that Maggie had an unfortunate predilection for elves and fairies, which I unfortunately do…  in fact until August I’m living in a rented house I call my ‘elf house’.”

Dr. Hodge continues, “We had a bunch of conversations about fungi and what would be possible, and slightly more than possible.  He came to visit the herbarium, and ended up setting a scene there (in fact every time I drive by the spot where “my roommate’s” body was dumped I have a mental shiver.  He didn’t need much help–he did his own research and he’s a brilliant guy.  He and I and his wife Susan got to be good friends, and I gave feedback on a not-quite-final draft of the book.  Of course there is no such fungus as the one in his book–that one embodies the evils of a combination of things that actually do exist: Fusarium, Candida, and Claviceps.”

The film rights to Spiral have been picked up by Chockstone Pictures (The Road) and McEuen is working on a screenplay adaption.

“If I’m going to be fictionalized, I’m really happy to be fictionalized in a book I like, by an author I like!  I wonder who will play me in the movie?” wonders Hodge.

You don’t have to be a mycophile to enjoy Spiral. Fans of Michael Chrichton or Douglass Preston will also find it satisfying. It’s basically a techno-thriller that happens to have some mycology in it. Any novel that features synthetic biology, nanotechnology, a dangerous fungus, letterboxing and a scene where characters play Go, is super a-okay with me.

A note on reading books on the iPad: I am impressed. It is just so much fun to decide to get a book and have it ready to read in about a minute. The price is right too, ranging from free (for copyright expired classics or any that a publisher wishes to release) to $12.99 or less for most others.  I also recently read Feed by Mira Grant (as part of my quest to read all the Hugo Award nominees for 2010) on the iPad and enjoyed it too. The quality of the text is excellent. I was worried that the back-lit screen would cause eye strain, but so far, I have experienced no discomfort at all. The bookmarking feature makes it easy for multiple readers to keep track of where they are.

But you know what the coolest thing is? I can actually read faster on the iPad than I can with an actual bound paper book. How? By setting the text size quite large so big chunks of words can be taken in all at once. It’s kind of like speed reading without the bogosity factor, because it actually works. The page count goes way up when the text size is set large but the pages fly by. Take Feed as an example. When the text was set at the size I liked, iBooks calculated there were 1830 pages (the trade paperback version is 592 pages). That seems like  lot. However, I timed myself and was able to get through about 100 of those pages every 12 minutes. At that rate a whole book goes by in 3-4 hours. Awesome!

Cover of Mushrooms and Other Fungi of North America by Roger Phillips

Oh good, a new mushroom book, I thought as I pulled the fresh-looking copy of Mushrooms and Other Fungi of North America (Firefly Books, Buffalo, NY, 2010) by Roger Phillips off the shelf at my local library. For a new book, it looked awfully familiar for some reason. A quick scan of the front matter did not reveal that it was a new edition though, in fact it said “First Printing” so, okay, must be new. The cover boldly claims the book to be “the most comprehensive mushroom guide with over 1,000 color photographs.” Just how well does it hold up to that claim?

No other book I know of has so many color photographs of mushrooms. Every mushroom entry has a photo to go with it (except for the few instances when a “similar” species is discussed under the heading of another) and these are fine photos too. Phillips is a skilled naturalist and expert nature photographer. He shows each mushroom in a variety of stages of growth and includes top and under cap views as well as a cross-section through the stem. It’s an excellent way of depicting fungi for identification purposes. So, it probably is the “most comprehensive” guide featuring color photography.

That said, I do not think the book rises to the level of David Arora’s Mushrooms Demystified with respect to the number of species discussed. The keys in Mushrooms and Other Fungi of North America are very basic as well and pale in comparison to Arora’s with respect to thoroughness and detail. The book includes a beginner’s key designed to provide a possible identification of a few common genera based on  pictures. Another key is provided to guide the user to the proper genus based on general morphology and spore color. From there, you just have to leaf through the pictures, read the descriptions (which are adequate) and hope for the best. In comparison to Mushrooms Demystified, the introduction, glossary, and keys are inferior—so no—I’m afraid this is clearly not the most comprehensive mushroom guide ever. It’s a minor point, but hey, if you are going to claim it on the cover, you better be able to back it up.

The 1991 (left) and 2010 versions

And, is it even a new book? I had a sneaking feeling… A quick search of my technical book shelf produced a copy of Mushrooms of North America (1991) by Roger Philips and many of the same assistants (for the 2010 edition these are Geoffry Kibby, Nicky Foy, Richard L. Homola, Currie D. Marr, Buck McAdoo, and Rodham E. Tulloss). The front plates are the same. The introduction, beginners key, and glossary are essentially the same but have been rewritten and edited. The generic key is almost identical with a few edits.

I did not check every single photograph, but the ones I did check were identical between the two books. My conclusion it that this is not a new book, but actually an updated edition of the previous book published twenty years ago by Little, Brown and Company. There is no reason not to update and improve a twenty year-old book, but it really should have been called a new edition and given some credit to the original.

I would not recommend Mushrooms and Other Fungi of North America as anyone’s main mushroom field guide, but in conjunction with a guide containing better keys and descriptions, it makes an excellent second resource because of the photographs.

Comparison of 1991 (left) and 2010 title pages

So, if there is anyone out there who would like to receive the book and write a review of it for MycoRant, I will be happy to send it to you. Send me an email or a tweet. Thanks.

Cover of "The Triumph of the Fungi"

David Spahr’s book Edible and Medicinal Mushrooms of New England and Eastern Canada is now available for a MycoRant review. The publisher will send a copy to the reviewer directly. If you are a mycologist at a New England or Eastern Canadian university, or a knowledgeable member of a club from these parts (not including a club that David Spahr is also a member of) you may request the book by email or in the comment section below, or tweet a direct message to MycoRant. Let’s get it done!

Cover of Edible and Medicinal Mushrooms of New England and Eastern Canada