Vintage Entangled Life: The phenomenal Sunday Times bestseller exploring how fungi make our worlds, change our minds and shape our futures

This is a great read, and really helps give Fungi the importance they deserve - I don't need to go into detail, that's been done already by other reviewers, but what I must say, is after reading this book you are left with a new and exciting take on this huge but on the whole neglected Kingdom.Why not 5 stars? I do have a criticism. I found the format old fashioned - a few line drawings, with a small section of colour in the middle. If I hadn't read the review in the New Scientist I don't think I would have even bothered to pick it up and look through it. When it was published my Dad bought the New Naturalist, Ramsbottom's Mushrooms and Toadstools - and as a nine year old I was absolutely hooked - first by the wonderful illustrations and then by the text. I think a lot of folk will miss out because this book looks boring, a poor layout and a lack of illustrations. I know it's not comparable in any way but I've just bought my grandson - 'Fungarium' - and he thinks that's great, and as a nine year old is beginning to read it.

I'm a compulsive reader of all sorts of books, mainly fiction but lots of non-fiction too. This is simply one of the most amazing books I have read.First, the science is explained simply, and like all of the book beautifully written. Abundance of 'interesting facts'. Did you know that there is a fungus that inserts itself into a type of ant. These ants notmally hate climbling but the fungus changes that so they climb up the stalk of a plant and then bite hard into a leaf. This kills the ant but the fungus which by this time has grown from the ant's head, merges with the leaf to continue its contribution to vast networks of incredible complexity.There's a visit to a factory that makes furniture and more from fungi. Some fungi can lift pavements and concrete!Sheldrake overviews the relation between fungi and every other living thing on earth, including us. The author is a fermenter, enjoys making beers and wines, depending on yeat - a fungus. 'Entanglement' is a word invented initially to refer to complex relations between people and society, yet we are given an incredible insight into fungal entanglement everywhere, networks that seem to have an intelligence without a brain. Also, there is a foray into the worlds of psychodelia and the many 'magic mushrooms'.If that were all it would be enough but where the book scored most with me was in giving a tantalising glimpse into thinking itself, how we could think differently, how the neat conceptual boxes we are used to could be dissolved and we cross subject areas, academic disciplines, imbibe a much greater imaginative way of seeing ourselves, each other and the natural world.Buy it today.

I was already a commited mycophile well before reading this brilliantly informative and accessible book and after having just finished reading it I hope and believe it will infect many others with the fungus bug and aid in the mycoremediation of our sadly afflicted planet and the mad evolved ape afflicting it. Looking forward to more mushroom related wisdom and information from this author in the future...

This product arrived with so much dust all over it. Where was it stored? In a vacuum cleaner?

Absolutely fascinating and ground breaking. So eloquently written and the research is thorough and referenced throughout. .. I read it with increasing excitement about what is possible.