the Understory: Entangled Life: The Illustrated Edition: How Fungi Make Our Worlds by Merlin Sheldrake
Entangled Life: The Illustrated Edition: How Fungi Make Our Worlds
BY: Merlin Sheldrake
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 the mind-bending, “gorgeous” (Margaret Atwood), ”brilliant [and] entrancing” (The Guardian) Entangled Life, Sheldrake introduced us to this mysterious but massively diverse kingdom of life. This new edition, abridged from the original, features over 100 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. In vivid, surprising images, Sheldrake reveals how these extraordinary organisms—and our relationships with them—are changing our understanding of how life works.
If you’d like to participate, please have read the above selection by the meeting date so that you can show up authentically and contribute to the conversation meaningfully. We will have open discussion, with leading questions if necessary, to help digest and possibly apply what was presented in the selection.
Bark’s The Understory book club is on a mission to maintain a robust and active study group as a strategy to deepen Bark’s engagement with environmental literature beyond the typical canon of white, western, male, and scientific writing. The Understory strives to develop cultural humility and promote radical environmental justice in our organization and community and by focusing on readings that support our collective and individual practices of decolonization, anti-oppression, and cultural transformation.
The Understory meets the last Monday of the month, starting at 6pm, at the Bark Office.