40 Books Like Blight

Paganini was an extraordinary violinist because of his exceptionally flexible thumb. Why was his thumb so “bendy”? Genetics. His genes provided an opportunity, and he learned how to exploit it.

Each of us is genetically unique. Our challenge is to understand our genes, which can be positive or negative. The Violinist’s Thumb is a nice introduction to the importance of DNA and the impact of genes in history. Inbreeding in the European royals led to hemophilia and ultimately contributed to the fall of the Czar and the Russian Empire. Genes have played a major role in history, art, and science.

It is a fun book with a novel perspective. 

My mother was a Freudian psychiatrist who prescribed antidepressants as a last resort, while my brother, also a psychiatrist, turns to antidepressants as first-line therapy. I wanted to learn more about why my family members took these different approaches.

Before Prozac is a wonderful history and behind-the-scenes look at the medical treatment of depression and related disorders. I learned about the politics behind restricting access to benzodiazepines (like Valium®), how Prozac® was designed to be an anti-histamine until Lilly found a better indication and much more.

This is the first book I recommend to my friends who have a personal or academic interest in depression. I couldn’t put it down and suggest it to friends who are interested in the history of modern medicine. 

Like most people, the two diseases of aging that scare me the most are ischemic stroke and Alzheimer’s disease. I don’t want to lose my ability to think, and I want to preserve my memory. So...there is no time like the present to explore what I can do to learn how to prevent Alzheimer’s disease.

Bredesen is the first neuroscientist I’ve encountered who describes different types of Alzheimer’s and offers practical diagnostic and dietary advice. I’ve explored his recommendations, and I think they’re sound. I’ve suggested this to many of my friends for them and/or for their parents and loved ones.

Who doesn’t love a true story of David and Goliath? Who really believes that the inventor of the “better mousetrap” always wins? This is a real-life medical thriller when the properties of a mineral were found to be a cheaper, better solution to stopping battlefield bleeding.

The “Davids” took on “Goliath,” who supported their vested interests in an inferior product that cost the lives of infantrymen. It took a courageous whistle-blower to come forward and change the trajectory. Ultimately the mineral was adopted and used effectively in the Iraq War. The better trauma medicine won, but it took years. The story is, sadly, all too real—but good does triumph!

First of all, how could anyone not love a book with an author’s name like that?

This book was on display mere inches from me while I was signing books at an exceptionally enchanting indie bookstore called Sudden Fiction in Castle Rock, Colorado. I couldn’t wait for the signing to be over so I could get a copy for myself. And it did not disappoint, the contents being as beguiling as the cover. 

Sheldrake describes not only the incredible and seemingly irrepressible capacity fungi have for survival and thrival (yep, I made that word up), but also encourages us to practice the same spells. I may have to become a mycologist in my next iteration – it’s good to remake oneself every few months, I think.

Viruses and bacteria attract all the attention from microbiologists and fungi are given short shrift in most textbooks. This needs to change because fungi are bona fide microbes that grow as budding yeast cells and colonies of slender threads and spin the planet’s carbon cycle. There are plenty of popular books on fungal biology, but John Ramsbottom’s Mushrooms and Toadstools, first published in 1953, has not been bettered. It captivates the reader with a succession of marvelous stories without losing grip on the science. This book is a great place to begin a lifetime of learning about fungi.

Sometimes you just need a coffee table sort of book and though it is paperback, Frédéric Raevens photography in this book is worth the purchase alone. When I’m buying cookbooks I make sure to buy cookbooks written by chefs from other countries as it offers a lovely diversity of ingredients, techniques, and approaches. Emanuelli lives in Brussels and I found their perspective refreshing. The first fifth of the book is full-page mushroom porn in the best possible way. You could stop right there, but there’s so much more; recipes such as Glazed pork belly with truffled honey and Caramelized Belgian endive with black trumpet mushrooms, and Porcini and Chestnut soup. When I decided to write a mushroom cookbook, I was so pleased that my book stayed away from many of the others on the market by simply adding butter and cream to every recipe and calling it good. And then… show more.

Full disclosure, the author Langdon Cook is a friend of mine based out of Seattle where I live and we’ve foraged together, taught classes together, and made a spectacularly crappy batch of blackberry wine together but that’s not why I’m recommending his excellent book The Mushroom Hunters. Langdon takes the reader on a rollicking ride to places we didn’t at first think we wanted to go and then leaves us wanting more when he moves on. He skillfully teases apart the myths versus facts behind historical turf wars and gun violence in matsutake patches in one chapter and shadows Doug, a self-described redneck, throughout the book as he traverses the changing demographics of pickers and buyers, now firmly in the hands of many in the Southeast Asian community. The characters that frame his book, the pickers, buyers, and chefs that occupy the universe of wild and foraged foods are… show more.

If dragons and elves are the mainstays of traditional fantasy, then mushrooms and squids are the mainstays of weird fantasy. And there’s no city with more squids or mushrooms than Vandermeer’s Ambergris. A haphazard port town infested by fungi and built on ancient ruins holding dark secrets, there’s nothing quite like Ambergris.

What I love so much about Vandermeer’s trilogy is that the city evolves and changes. City of Saints and Madmen is an excellent short story collection that introduces the setting in peacetime, and by the end of Finch it has seen so much conflict and upheaval that Ambergris evolves into a completely different and yet equally fascinating city. 

Dark and miraculous, an array of mushrooms awakens overnight: “Delicate umbrellas open, red octopus arms rise from the ground. Cupped eggs with nests appear ... a spooky green glows under a starlit sky.” I love how this gorgeous book finds poetry in the world of mushrooms while also being highly informative.

Through lyrical language, we learn about mushroom life cycles, how mushrooms interact with the ecosystem, and how they are used by animals and people. The illustrations shrink the reader down to a mouse’s eye level to explore this world of towering, mysterious mushrooms. This book is the perfect example of how nonfiction children’s writing can combine facts and beauty!