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What a Mushroom Lives For

By Hathaway, Michael J.

What a Mushroom Lives For

By Hathaway, Michael J.

0 - Default Title
Description
How the prized matsutake mushroom is remaking human communities in China-and providing new ways to understand human and more-than-human worlds What a Mushroom Lives For pushes today's mushroom renaissance in compelling new directions. For centuries, Western science has promoted a human- and animal-centric framework of what counts as action, agency, movement, and behavior. But, as Michael Hathaway shows, the world-making capacities of mushrooms radically challenge this orthodoxy by revealing the lively dynamism of all forms of life. The book tells the fascinating story of one particularly prized species, the matsutake, and the astonishing ways it is silently yet powerfully shaping worlds, from the Tibetan plateau to the mushrooms' final destination in Japan. Many Tibetan and Yi people have dedicated their lives to picking and selling this mushroom-a delicacy that drives a multibillion-dollar global trade network and that still grows only in the wild, despite scientists' intensive efforts to cultivate it in urban labs. But this is far from a simple story of humans exploiting a passive, edible commodity. Rather, the book reveals the complex, symbiotic ways that mushrooms, plants, humans, and other animals interact. It explores how the world looks to the mushrooms, as well as to the people who have grown rich harvesting them. A surprise-filled journey into science and human culture, this exciting and provocative book shows how fungi shape our planet and our lives in strange, diverse, and often unimaginable ways.
Product details
Binding:
Paperback
Number of Pages:
270
Release Date:
2023-11-07
Publication Date:
2024-01-31
Publisher:
Princeton Univers. Press
Languages:
Original: English
ISBN10:
0691225907
ISBN13:
9780691225906
GPSR Manufacturer Reference:
[email protected]
Weight:
254 g
Height:
132 cm
Width:
201 cm
Thickness:
21 cm
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