Lawrence Millman

En estos momentos, en la oscura humedad de un tronco hueco, crece un hongo. Parece inveros mil, pero ese hongo tiene el mismo ancestro que t , y tu relaci n con l no solo es gen tica: tambi n es gastron mica, espiritual, religiosa y comercial.Desde el ag rico blanco, que provoca la orina y baja la fiebre de la malaria, hasta los hongos bailarines de la pel cula Fantas a de Disney, pasando por Alicia en el pa s de las maravillas y el hongo de Chern bil que se alimenta de la radiaci n, este compendio con m s de 180 entradas te transportar a un universo incre ble.No es una exageraci n: este a o encontrar s muy pocos libros m s interesantes que este. No importa en qu a o leas esto.ENGLISH DESCRIPTION"This little book is big fun."--Michael Pollan An illustrated mini-encyclopedia of fungal lore, from John Cage and Terence McKenna to mushroom sex and fairy rings Fungipedia presents a delightful A-Z treasury of mushroom lore. With more than 180 entries--on topics as varied as Alice in Wonderland, chestnut blight, medicinal mushrooms, poisonings, Santa Claus, and waxy caps--this collection will transport both general readers and specialists into the remarkable universe of fungi. Combining ecological, ethnographic, historical, and contemporary knowledge, author and mycologist Lawrence Millman discusses how mushrooms are much more closely related to humans than to plants, how they engage in sex, how insects farm them, and how certain species happily dine on leftover radiation, cockroach antennae, and dung. He explores the lives of individuals like African American scientist George Washington Carver, who specialized in crop diseases caused by fungi; Beatrix Potter, creator of Peter Rabbit, who was prevented from becoming a professional mycologist because she was a woman; and Gordon Wasson, a J. P. Morgan vice-president who almost single-handedly introduced the world to magic mushrooms. Millman considers why fungi are among the most significant organisms on our planet and how they are currently being affected by destructive human behavior, including climate change. With charming drawings by artist and illustrator Amy Jean Porter, Fungipedia offers a treasure trove of scientific and cultural information. The world of mushrooms lies right at your door--be amazed

Outsider: My Boyhood with Thoreau is a memoir told in vignettes by the mycologist and author Lawrence Millman. Early on, Millman found in Thoreau a kindred spirit, far outside of the mainstream social, sporting, and educational interests he was expected to be cultivating. And like Thoreau, he would rather be out-of-doors -- where he could socialize with mushrooms, insects, or earthworms -- than stuck in any indoor locale.

In a remote corner of the Arctic in 1941, a meteor shower flashed across the sky for an unusually long time. Taking this to be a sign, one of the local Inuit proclaimed himself Jesus Christ. Another proclaimed himself God. Anyone who didn’t believe in them was Satan. Violence ensued.At the End of the World isn’t just the remarkable story of a series of murders that occurred on the Belcher Islands, a group of wind-blasted rocks in Canada’s Hudson Bay. It’s also a starting place for a deeper cultural exploration. Against the backdrop of the murders, which highlight the fact that senseless violence in the name of religion is not a contemporary phenomenon and that a even people as seemingly peaceful as the Inuit can turn to chaos at the hands of one person’s delusion, Millman addresses the burgeoning dawn of the digital era, following the murders’ trail to show how our obsession with screens is not unlike a cult and offering a warning cry against the erosion of humanity and the destruction of the environment. The story becomes a confluence of the consequences of generational trauma, outside religious evangelism, systemic racism against indigenous people, the perilous passage from the natural to the digital world, and what it means to be human in a time of technological dominance and climate disasters.At the End of the World, available for the first time in paperback, is not a straightforward tale of true crime but an examination of many of the issues that have become dominant in the global conversation. In snippets of reflection, Millman asks us to look north for answers to many of the questions we all hold, literally, in our hands.

The Last Speaker of Bear is the patchwork story of a life spent traveling in the north from Alaska to Siberia. Lawrence Millman first visited northern Canada as a child and has spent four decades since on some thirty-five expeditions in search of undeveloped landscapes and traditional cultures, not to mention untamed wildlife. While much of his experience is centered in Canada—including territories from Yukon to Quebec and Newfoundland/Labrador—he includes stories from villages in Greenland, Iceland, and Norway as well.Early on, Millman developed a reverence for the wisdom of indigenous and native communities with histories spanning centuries: Inuit, Inuk, Innu, Alutiiq, Cree, and others. Whether dining on mushrooms, fungus, tobacco leaves, or unusual foods that would have made even Andrew Zimmern or Anthony Bourdain turn up their noses, or exploring northern tundras, rugged mountains, or remote islands, he paints a picture of people often living in tenuous conditions but rooted in a faith that their worlds will provide for them. Relationships with bears, caribou, reindeer, walruses, seals, whales, and abundant avian life serve spiritual, companionship, and sustenance purposes. Traditions grounded in family and community rituals thrive, as do lost languages, natural medicine, and time-honored ways to survive difficult circumstances.. In this collection of vignettes, Millman reminds us of the potency of endangered knowledge as well as the importance of paying close attention to the natural world. He opens our eyes to a life in remote places thousands of miles from the fast-paced, urban world so many of us inhabit.

"This little book is big fun."—Michael PollanAn illustrated mini-encyclopedia of fungal lore, from John Cage and Terence McKenna to mushroom sex and fairy ringsFungipedia presents a delightful A–Z treasury of mushroom lore. With more than 180 entries—on topics as varied as Alice in Wonderland, chestnut blight, medicinal mushrooms, poisonings, Santa Claus, and waxy caps—this collection will transport both general readers and specialists into the remarkable universe of fungi.Combining ecological, ethnographic, historical, and contemporary knowledge, author and mycologist Lawrence Millman discusses how mushrooms are much more closely related to humans than to plants, how they engage in sex, how insects farm them, and how certain species happily dine on leftover radiation, cockroach antennae, and dung. He explores the lives of individuals like African American scientist George Washington Carver, who specialized in crop diseases caused by fungi; Beatrix Potter, creator of Peter Rabbit, who was prevented from becoming a professional mycologist because she was a woman; and Gordon Wasson, a J. P. Morgan vice-president who almost single-handedly introduced the world to magic mushrooms. Millman considers why fungi are among the most significant organisms on our planet and how they are currently being affected by destructive human behavior, including climate change.With charming drawings by artist and illustrator Amy Jean Porter, Fungipedia offers a treasure trove of scientific and cultural information. The world of mushrooms lies right at your door—be amazed!Features a cloth cover with an elaborate foil-stamped design

Lawrence Millman's The Book of Origins is a rattle-your-brains collection of tales in the tradition of George Carlin, Jonathan Swift, and Italo Calvino, but not Jane Austen or Henry James. In its pages, you will learn about a highly moral man who refuses to marry his grandmother, God's failure as a Supreme Being and his subsequent retirement, a man given a prison sentence for writing a novel, a U.S. president who decides to attack other countries because he's horny, a barely educated Middle American who's offered the Nobel Prize in Physics, and numerous other undocumented incidents in our planet's history.

Let author Lawrence Millman escort you on a journey into the history of over 150 fungi species. Learn how to make spore prints, discover which species are edible, find out which mushroom the Vikings ate before their raids and more.

In 1934, in the depths of the Great Depression, Elliott Merrick and his wife bought a ramshackle farm on a Vermont hillside for $1,000. Merrick, a young writer with a healthy dose of idealism and a determination to live in the country, had just sold his first book to Maxwell Perkins at Scribner's. "I had an idea that I would be rich and famous henceforth," Merrick wrote, but added, "nothing could be farther from the truth . . . As I look back, I'm amazed that we could so blithely have crossed our great Rubicon on a spiderweb. But it turned out to be one of those fortunate mistakes—one of those fraught-with-peril enterprises that you might never have embarked on if you had known the consequences—like being born, for instance." Green Mountain Farm describes Merrick's and his family's often haphazard attempts to make a go of it on these stony, wintry acres, in a house that was falling down around them. As Merrick puts it, "We did everything wrong, but it came out right." They were dirt poor, but through it all, believed wholeheartedly in going directly after the things they wanted most: to write and to farm, however they could. A lyrical, funny, richly fulfilling book about old houses, farming, writing, and the joys of country life, this book is as fresh today as when it was originally published more than fifty years ago.

Award-winning travel writer Lawrence Millman tromps through western Ireland's rugged countryside to record the oral history of its people before their hard-earned traditions are permanently stifled by industrialization and development. In doing so he produces a "lovely nugget of good writing" (New York Times) that relays the stories of traditional laborers—tinkers cartwrights, rat-charmers, coopers, thatchers, farriers, gleemen, pig-gelders—with candor and depth.