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Ecology Book Club: Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake

How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Futures

This adult book club discusses books on human ecology, sustainable living, environmental justice and post-fossil fuel futures. Books can be nonfiction, fiction or poetry.

This month we will be discussing Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Lives & Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake. Note that although we usually meet on the 2nd Monday, because it's a holiday we will be meeting on the 1st Tuesday. 

"A “brilliant [and] entrancing” (The Guardian) journey into the hidden lives of fungi—the great connectors of the living world—and their astonishing and intimate roles in human life, with the power to heal our bodies, expand our minds, and help us address our most urgent environmental problems.

When we think of fungi, we likely think of mushrooms. But mushrooms are only fruiting bodies, analogous to apples on a tree. Most fungi live out of sight, yet make up a massively diverse kingdom of organisms that supports and sustains nearly all living systems. Fungi provide a key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways we think, feel, and behave.

In the first edition of this mind-bending book, Sheldrake introduced us to this mysterious but massively diverse kingdom of life. This exquisitely designed volume, abridged from the original, features more than one hundred full-color images that bring the spectacular variety, strangeness, and beauty of fungi to life as never before.

Fungi throw our concepts of individuality and even intelligence into question. They are metabolic masters, earth makers, and key players in most of life’s processes. They can change our minds, heal our bodies, and even help us remediate environmental disaster. By examining fungi on their own terms, Sheldrake reveals how these extraordinary organisms—and our relationships with them—are changing our understanding of how life works."

ONE OF PEOPLE’S BEST BOOKS OF THE 2020s • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, BBC Science Focus, The Daily Mail, Geographical, The Times, The Telegraph, New Statesman, London Evening Standard, Science Friday

Winner of the Wainwright Prize, the Royal Society Science Book Prize, and the Guild of Food Writers Award • Shortlisted for the British Book Award • Longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize

Email rachel.white@dc.gov:

• For help finding a copy of Entangled Life. You can also ask for a copy at the 2nd Floor Info Desk of Cleveland Park Library — extra copies are available for book club participants until they run out. (This is the best way to obtain a copy in time to read it beforehand.)
• To receive updates about future book club meetings
• For other information

Registration is optional but encouraged for new participants.

If you would like to request an accommodation, please contact dcplaccess@dc.gov at least one week prior to the program.

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