Reading list · 7 books, ranked
The Best Books About Mushrooms and Mycology
Fungi went from a curiosity to a whole kingdom in about a generation of popular writing. These are the books to read whether you want to identify what is in the woods, grow something on your own substrate, or understand what mycelium is actually doing underground.
Updated 2026-07-29
Entangled Life
Merlin Sheldrake · 2020
A biologist makes the case that fungi are not a footnote to plant life but a parallel kingdom that shaped it, from mycorrhizal networks under forests to the yeasts in bread. Sheldrake is a careful scientist and a genuinely good writer, a rare pairing.
The best entry point by a distance. Sheldrake makes the case that fungi shaped plant life rather than trailing it, and he is that rare combination of careful scientist and genuinely good writer.
Mushrooms Demystified
David Arora · 1979
The doorstop identification key that serious North American mushroom hunters still measure others against. Dense, technical, and leavened by Arora's dry asides, it assumes you are willing to work through a dichotomous key rather than match a photograph.
The doorstop that serious North American hunters still measure other guides against. It assumes you will work a dichotomous key rather than match a photograph, and Arora's dry asides make the density bearable.
All That the Rain Promises and More
David Arora · 1991
Arora's pocket field guide, built for the trail rather than the desk: two hundred common western species, keyed on what you can see standing over them. The companion most people carry once they have read the big book at home.
The pocket companion to the doorstop, built for the trail: two hundred common western species keyed on what you can see standing over them. Read the big book at home, carry this one.
Mycelium Running
Paul Stamets · 2005
Part cultivation manual, part argument that fungi can be put to work remediating soil, filtering water, and rebuilding damaged ground. Stamets is an advocate as much as a mycologist, and the practical growing chapters are the durable half.
Stamets on putting fungi to work remediating soil and filtering water. He is an advocate as much as a mycologist and it shows, but the cultivation chapters are practical and have aged well.
Radical Mycology
Peter McCoy · 2016
A cultivation and ecology manual written from a do-it-yourself, low-cost angle, covering everything from sterile technique on a budget to fungal remediation. McCoy assumes you want to grow and experiment, not just identify.
The growing manual for people without a lab budget. McCoy covers sterile technique you can improvise and assumes you want to experiment rather than just identify.
The Forager's Harvest
Samuel Thayer · 2006
Thirty-two wild edible plants covered in real depth: how to identify them across seasons, when to harvest, and how to prepare them so they are actually worth eating. Thayer is scathing about guides that repeat untested claims, and he tested these.
Not strictly mycology, but the discipline transfers. Thayer is scathing about guides that repeat untested claims, and his season-by-season identification method is the right habit to bring to fungi.
Nature's Garden
Samuel Thayer · 2010
The follow-up, extending the same method to another forty-one wild edibles including several commonly mishandled ones. The look-alike comparisons are the most valuable pages, because that is where foraging mistakes actually happen.
The follow-up, and the look-alike comparisons are the most valuable pages in either volume, because misidentification is where foraging actually goes wrong.
From the shelf to the garden
From the field guide to the fruiting body
Arora teaches you to identify what is already in the woods, which costs nothing but time. Stamets and McCoy point the other way, toward growing your own on a substrate you control, where you know the species because you inoculated it.
Cultivation is the honest first step for anyone not yet confident keying a wild specimen, and it starts with culinary and functional mushrooms, by species, where what you get is identified before it reaches you.
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Where to go next
- mushroom extracts and tinctures · the hot-water and alcohol preparations Stamets discusses
- dried herbs and botanicals · for the formulas that pair fungi with plants