Chanterelle Dreams, Amanita Nightmares: The Love, Lore, and Mystique of Mushrooms

Throughout history, people have had a complex and confusing relationship with mushrooms. Are fungi food or medicine, beneficial decomposers or deadly “toadstools” ready to kill anyone foolhardy enough to eat them? In fact, there is truth in all these statements. In Chanterelle Dreams, Amanita Nightmares author Greg Marley reveals some of the wonders and mysteries of mushrooms, and our conflicting human reactions to them. This fresh and fascinating look at mushrooms – their natural history, their uses and abuses, their pleasures and dangers – is a splendid introduction to both fungi themselves and to our human fascination with them.

From useful descriptions of the most foolproof edible species to revealing stories about hallucinogenic or poisonous, yet often beautiful fungi, Marley’s long and passionate experience will inform and inspire readers with the stories of these dark and mysterious denizens of our forest floor. Chanterelle Dreams, Amanita Nightmares: The Love, Lore and Mystique of Mushrooms won the Jane Grigson Award at the International Association of Culinary Professionals Cookbook Awards in June 2011. The Jane Grigson Award is given to a book that exemplifies Jane Grigson’s great ability “to put food in a wider cultural context, using diligent but not pedantic scholarship.”

Contents:

– Mushrooms and Culture
– Mushrooms as Food
– Dangerously Toxic, Deadly Interesting
– Mushrooms and the Mind: The Origin of Religious and the Pathway to Enlightenment
– Mushrooms within Living Ecosystems
– Tools for a New World