Signed First Edition - Entangled Life: ENTANGLED LIFE / FOYLES SIGNE

They’re responsible for life as we know it. They can survive the vacuum of space. They connect different species in vast webs and manage nutrients amongst them. They’re capable of a kind of intelligent decision-making. They are essential to the development of human civilisation. They can consume rock, oil, plastics, hazardous chemicals and more. They could replace leather, plastic and even building materials. And they could be the solution to environmental catastrophe.

Introducing Entangled Life from biologist Merlin Sheldrake, a brilliant new book on all things fungi—a richly informative and mind-expanding ride through an overlooked world, and its untapped potential for humankind.

Entangled Life is packed with fascinating facts that force us to reconsider what we think we know, and Sheldrake is a singularly passionate, well-connected guide who grabs you by the hand and whisks you through the weird and wonderful biology of the fungal world; from the tropical forest floor to the labs pioneering fungal knowledge he introduces us to an eclectic, international network of scientists, environmentalists, acid priests and amateurs, landing you in the midst of a growing movement buzzing with the potential to really change the world. And Sheldrake’s never afraid to get his hands dirty either: truffle hunting, scrumping Newton’s apples, tripping on LSD, and bathing naked up to his neck in rotting wood...

Yet more than a brilliant, page-turning biology book, Entangled Life is itself a mind-expanding, watershed addition to popular science literature. As Sheldrake meets the ecologists, mycologists and conservationists working to both understand fungi and repurpose them, he poses perspective-shifting ideas—not to anthropomorphize fungi, but to reconsider what we think we know in line with fungal models. If fungi can seemingly make decisions, to what extent are they intelligent? If their mode of intelligence is networked, is ours the only way? If a plant requires fungi, where does an individual lifeform really end? Can fungi undo the damage we’ve done to the climate and environment? Can they help plan our infrastructure better? Could we one day live in houses made of them? And, if we couldn’t exist without fungi, why are they so overlooked?