Mycophilia

Mycophilia
Author: Eugenia Bone
Publisher: National Geographic Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013-02-26
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1609619870

An incredibly versatile cooking ingredient containing an abundance of vitamins, minerals, and possibly cancer-fighting properties, mushrooms are among the most expensive and sought-after foods on the planet. Yet when it comes to fungi, culinary uses are only the tip of the iceberg. Throughout history fungus has been prized for its diverse properties—medicinal, ecological, even recreational—and has spawned its own quirky subculture dedicated to exploring the weird biology and celebrating the unique role it plays on earth. In Mycophilia, accomplished food writer and cookbook author Eugenia Bone examines the role of fungi as exotic delicacy, curative, poison, and hallucinogen, and ultimately discovers that a greater understanding of fungi is key to facing many challenges of the 21st century. Engrossing, surprising, and packed with up-to-date science and cultural exploration, Mycophilia is part narrative and part primer for foodies, science buffs, environmental advocates, and anyone interested in learning a lot about one of the least understood and most curious organisms in nature.

From the District File

From the District File
Author: Kenneth Bernard
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
Total Pages: 132
Release: 1992
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780932511539

In this haunting narration from a postmillennial urban zero zone, the central character gains hope, strength, and renewed energy from conducting a nearly invisible campaign of microsabotage against a surrounding but amorphous bureaucratic terror. A skeptical new conscript to the burial clubs of the aged, the protagonist performs small but cunning acts of resistance. He recreates whimsical conversations with his son, now co-opted by the same forces that have lately grown aware of him. He inserts mistakes in the club's reports to the district, thereby defiantly remaking history in small ways. By slow degrees his acts put him in contact with what appears to be an organization of resistance. Then the forces of closure and constriction, quick to snuff out the merest hint of individuality, surround him with violence and images of death. His only recourse, other than capitulation, dissimulation, or death, is flight-but only to a wasteland on the edge of civilization. Living in an abandoned but mysteriously furnished garbage truck, he finds solace in the mongrels that roam the area, broods like a fisher king upon the rubble as winter impends, and plots the "burial" of his narration deep within the district file. From the District File is a finely tuned dramatic novel that re-invents the underground man for the nineties and in so doing gives us a story that is muted but powerful and oddly transcendent.