Description
This edition contains a bookplate signed by the author
“A dazzling, vibrant, vision-changing book. Sentence after sentence stopped me short. I ended it wonderstruck at the fungal world – the secrets of which modern science is only now beginning to fathom – and the earth-shaking, hierarchy-breaking implications of Sheldrake’s argument. A remarkable work by a remarkable writer”
– Robert MacFarlane
“Entangled Life is a revelation. It is a radical, hopeful and important book and I couldn’t put it down. With elegance, wit and clarity Sheldrake engages us in the hidden world of fungi, a miraculous web of connections, interactions and communication that changes the way we need to look at life, the planet and ourselves” – Isabella Tree, author of Wilding
There is a life form so strange and wondrous that it challenges our conception of life itself…
Neither plant nor animal, it is found throughout the earth, the air and our bodies. Its ability to digest rock enabled the first life on land, and for 40 million years its towering structures dominated earth’s landscape. The discovery that it connects plants in large collaborative networks, the ‘Wood Wide Web’, is transforming our understanding of how non-animal life works. And yet most of its millions of species remain undocumented.
In this mind-altering adventure, Merlin Sheldrake introduces the spectacular and neglected world of fungi: endlessly surprising organisms that have made our world, and continue to shape our futures.
Reviews
“This is a rigorous, comprehensive, perspective-altering debut by a young author who, if this book is any indication, has an exciting career in not only science but also literature ahead of him.” – The Spectator
“He is nothing if not a participatory researcher into his subject, and one with a winning sense of humour. At another point, he goes truffle-hunting with some secretive experts in Italy. When he turns up, he discovers that they are wearing camouflage outfits. ‘I asked them,’ he reports, deadpan, ‘whether it helped them to sneak up on the truffles.’ (No, but it helped them to avoid being followed by rival trufflers.)” – The Telegraph