I first caught notice of Paul Stamets from his Six Ways Mushrooms Can Save The World TED Talk. If you haven’t seen it, you really should check it out. It was so inspiring that I have showed it to countless friends and family members. And it motivated me to purchase Stamets’ book, Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save The World.

The book is very well-written and chock full of relevant research. There are more than 300 full-color photographs of mycelium, and their fruiting bodies, mushrooms. Stamets breaks the book up into three sections: 1) The Mycelial Mind, 2) Mycorestoration and 3) Growing Mycelia And Mushrooms. The first section explains what mycelium is and how its life cycle is structured. Stamets makes an analogy between mycelium and the Internet, which I found to be very interesting. The second section focuses on “mycorestoration,” which is the use of mycelium for environmental repair. These techniques include mycofiltration (the cleaning of natural water systems), mycoforestry (sustaining natural forest communities), mycoremediation (the conversion of dangerous toxins and heavy metals into mushrooms) and mycopesticides (the use of mycelium against pests). All of these techniques are sound and have loads of research to back them up. The final section of the book focuses on how to grow mushrooms, the nutritional properties of mushrooms and a showcase of Stamets’ favorite species.

I found that my favorite section of the book was the final one, and it seems that it was Stamets’ favorite section as well. His writing had a lot more momentum during the end of the book. The middle section of the book, which focuses on mycorestoration, blew my mind. There are a lot of uses for mushrooms and mycelium that most people never think about. I am not sure that I have really been “bemushroomed” yet, but I have been considering starting a grow project with either oyster or shittake mushrooms. If I do get around to doing that, it might be interesting to post some pictures of my progress here on the blog. At any rate, I think that Mycelium Running is a great read and should be read by anyone interested in nature or a solution for solving our environmental problems.

4/5 Stars. 343 pages. Published 2005.