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From beneficial yeasts that aid digestion to toxic moulds that cause disease, we are constantly navigating a world filled with fungi. Molds, Mushrooms, and Medicines explores the amazing ways fungi interact with our bodies, showing how our health and well-being depend on an immense ecosystem of yeasts and moulds inside us and all around us.
Nicholas Money takes readers on a guided tour of a marvellous unseen realm, describing how our immune systems are engaged in continuous conversation with the teeming mycobiome inside the body, and how we can fall prey to serious and even life-threatening infections when this peaceful coexistence is disturbed. He also sheds light on our complicated relationship with fungi outside the body, from wild mushrooms and cultivated moulds that have been staples of the human diet for millennia to the controversial experimentation with magic mushrooms in the treatment of depression.
Drawing on the latest advances in mycology, Molds, Mushrooms, and Medicines reveals what scientists are learning about the importance of fungi to our lives, from their vital role in supporting the ecosystems on which we depend to their emerging importance in lifesaving medicine.
Nicholas P. Money is professor of biology at Miami University in Ohio and the author of many books, including The Rise of Yeast: How the Sugar Fungus Shaped Civilization, Mushrooms: A Natural and Cultural History, and Microbiology: A Very Short Introduction.
"What a fine book! [...] Nicholas Money writes with a fluid, easy style and like so many scientists today displays a superb ability to inject snippets of wry humour into serious discussion."
– David Gascoigne, Travels with Birds
"An amazing tour of the world of fungi – a realm that is more entwined with the lives of humans than we realize."
– Alanna Collen, author of 10% Human: How Your Body's Microbes Hold the Key to Health and Happiness
"A scintillating account of our inseparable relationships with fungi, both within and outside the body. Money's compelling blend of social history and the latest mycological research, told with his signature wry wit, will leave you both astonished and squirming."
– Alison Pouliot, author of Meetings with Remarkable Mushrooms: Forays with Fungi across Hemispheres
"With an encyclopedic knowledge, a contagious curiosity, and a great sense of humor, Nicholas Money has written another wonderful guide to the fantastic world of fungi. Yet this time, we look within and upon the human body to explore the teeming fungal diversity that shapes our daily existence in ways that remain powerful yet mysterious."
– Michael J. Hathaway, author of What a Mushroom Lives For
