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    6 Books About Mushrooms for Fans of ‘The Last of Us’

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    If “The Last of Us” has you unnerved by fungi, these six books can offer some new perspective. (Our spore-bearing, mysterious little neighbors aren’t completely evil — promise.)On Sunday, HBO will air the Season 1 finale of the post-apocalyptic drama “The Last of Us,” a video game adaptation that has impressed critics and viewers with its sensitive depiction of people finding reasons to survive in a broken world. And what broke that world? Well, that’s a complicated question. Human nature, for sure. Government overreach, arguably. And, oh yeah … mushrooms.The plague that devastates humanity in “The Last of Us” can be traced back to a genus of ascomycete fungi known as cordyceps, which infects people’s brains, turning them into ferocious monsters. This is just the latest in a long history of mushroom slander in pop culture. From the children’s book “Babar the Elephant” to the movie “Phantom Thread,” all too often artists see mushrooms as not just creepy to look at but downright dangerous.But not always! For some different perspectives on how we can live alongside our spore-bearing, umbrella-shaped little neighbors, check out these books.If “The Last of Us” has you nervous about fungi, these books may help put you at ease.Liane Hentscher/HBOEntangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures, by Merlin SheldrakeAnyone in search of fun facts about fungi should start with this collection of historical anecdotes and scientific inquiry, written by a British biologist who knows a lot about the symbiotic relationships between mushrooms and other living creatures. Sheldrake writes about mushrooms as food, as medicine, as a building material and as an advanced communications network — as works of astonishing organic art, in other words. As our critic Jennifer Szalai wrote, “Reading it left me not just moved but altered, eager to disseminate its message of what fungi can do.”Fantastic Fungi Community Cookbook, by Eugenia BoneA James Beard Award-nominated food and science journalist, Bone has written multiple books about mushrooms, including the lively overview “Mycophilia: Revelations From the Weird World of Mushrooms.” But for those primarily interested in consuming these weird little protuberances, Bone combined her own research with input from foragers, chefs and mycologists to produce a cookbook filled with delicious recipes and enticing photography. (Bone also contributed to a documentary by Louie Schwartzberg called “Fantastic Fungi,” available on Netflix.)The Secret Life of Fungi: Discoveries from a Hidden World, by Aliya WhiteleyBest known as a science-fiction writer, not a scientist, Whiteley brings a fascination with the alien aspects of nature to this more informal survey. She takes a personal approach to the subject, describing a lifelong preoccupation with mushrooms: how they look, how they taste and how they reproduce. With a different framing, the wilder tidbits in the book — including many details about how these organisms can both destroy and create — could be terrifying. Instead, they’re presented as miniature miracles.The Way Through the Woods: On Mushrooms and Mourning, by Long Litt WoonPart memoir, part anthropological study and part celebration of life, this book tells the story of how Long responded to the death of her husband by following through on a plan they made to take a class about mushrooms. Learning more about fungi — and getting to know the habits and the obsessions of other people who are fascinated by them — changed the author’s perspective on perseverance and grief. As our critic Sarah Lyall wrote, “Seeing Long’s capacity for wonder and even contentment in the midst of her sadness feels like seeing tiny shoots of grass peeking from the ash in a landscape stripped bare by fire.”Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno-GarciaToo much positivity in the books above? Try this horror-tinged mystery novel, about a 1950s debutante named Noemí, who travels from Mexico City to an imposing rural mansion to rescue her cousin Catalina from the mysterious Doyle family. Noemí’s snooping about the Doyles turns up some startling revelations, including their reliance on a special strain of mushroom that helps keep them healthy, strong and preternaturally powerful. Even here, though, the fungi are not the bad guys. Their impressive potency is just being misused by the malevolent.Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: A Pop-up Adaptation, by Lewis Carroll. Illustrated by Robert Sabuda.We can’t leave this topic behind without mentioning one of the most memorable images in all of children’s literature: the hookah-smoking caterpillar coiled atop a mushroom cap, urging the lost and confused Alice to take a bite from his perch to grow either larger or smaller. There have been many editions of Carroll’s proto-psychedelic saga since it was first published in 1865; but this pop-up book, illustrated and engineered by Robert Sabuda, is particularly amazing. Look for the caterpillar’s mushroom hidden under one of the book’s many little flaps — because as always, fungi flourish in the dark, taking root where we least expect them. More

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      in Television

      Mushrooms Aren’t Here to Destroy Us — Or to Save Us

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      The fictional fungus in “The Last of Us” touched a collective nerve. When it comes to mushrooms, we just can’t keep our cool.It’s grim, but in every post-apocalyptic story line, I wait for the moment when the characters float their theories about how the world fell apart, hoping to glean something useful.In HBO’s series “The Last of Us,” survivors of a global pandemic live in harsh, government-controlled quarantine zones to evade a parasitic fungus that turns them into zombies. Joel, a smuggler in what remains of Boston, believes that the ophiocordyceps mutation was delivered through the food system — contaminated batches of globally shipped flour or sugar spread the disease too quickly and efficiently for any kind of recall. Over the course of a long weekend, humanity was wrecked.The setup sounds pretty conventional for the zombie-thriller genre, but since the series premiered in January, the response has been a bit sweaty — panicked, even. Mycologists, fungal biologists and other mushroom-world experts have been called on, over and over, to assure us that while cordyceps species that zombify insects are real, a cordyceps mutation that thrives in humans is pure fiction.What got us so rattled?The fictional cordyceps mutation in HBO’s zombie-thriller series “The Last of Us” takes fear of fungus to the extreme.Warner MediaPaul Stamets, one of the country’s best-known mycologists, enjoyed the first two episodes of the show, but posted afterward on Facebook to emphasize the fact that no, cordyceps really aren’t capable of all that. “It is natural for humans to fear that which is powerful, but mysterious and misunderstood,” he wrote, wondering if the show played on our deep-seated fear of mushrooms.Inside the Dystopian World of ‘The Last of Us’The post-apocalyptic video game that inspired the TV series “The Last of Us” won over players with its photorealistic animation and a morally complex story.Game Review: “I found it hard to get past what it embraces with a depressing sameness, particularly its handling of its female characters,” our critic wrote of “The Last of Us” in 2013.‘Left Behind’: “The Last of Us: Left Behind,” a prologue designed to be played in a single sitting, was an unexpected hit in 2014.2020 Sequel: “The Last of Us Part II,” a tale of entrenched tribalism in a world undone by a pandemic, took a darker and unpredictable tone that left critics in awe.Playing the Game: Two Times reporters spent weeks playing the sequel in the run-up to its release. These were their first impressions.There are around 1.5 million species of fungi, a kingdom that is neither plant nor animal, and they’re some of the strangest and most marvelous life-forms on the planet, both feared and revered. But our relationship with mushrooms, particularly in the West, can be fraught — and not just because misidentifying one might be dangerous.In nature, mushrooms happily appear under the grossest and most fractious circumstances, when little else will. They can signal death, thriving in damp, dark rot, blooming in decomposition and nimbly decaying organic matter. Nevermind that this process is vital and regenerative (and, witnessed in a time-lapse, weirdly beautiful), it really freaks us out.When the artist Jae Rhim Lee wondered if it was possible for us to make a collective cultural shift, to approach death and its rituals differently, and to make smaller environmental impacts when we die, she designed a burial suit seeded with mushrooms. Nothing could be more natural — or more horrifyingly taboo — than, instead of eating mushrooms, inviting the mushrooms to eat us.Bioluminescent mushrooms, seen here in Gangwon Province, South Korea, glow in the dark.Video by Imazins / Getty ImagesMushrooms have a way of making us consider the things we prefer to avoid. Though this hasn’t stopped us from eating them — mushrooms are an ancient food source.The “stoned ape theory,” which imagines fungus as central to our evolution, was animated in Louie Schwartzberg’s terrifically pro-mushroom documentary, “Fantastic Fungi.” One scene shows how early humans might have eaten mushrooms, including psychedelic ones, off animal dung as they tracked prey across the savanna, then collectively tripped their way toward language, weaponry, music and more.Small, round buttons are the most cozy, familiar and recognizable of our edible mushrooms now, but there are hundreds of varieties we can eat (without tripping). In the pockets of wilderness around my home in Los Angeles, you might find brownish-orange candy caps, wild, yellowish frills of chanterelles and clusters of long-gilled oyster mushrooms. After rain, in the shady nooks of my own backyard, I see shaggy parasols pop up from time to time, as if by magic.In “The Last of Us” a warming climate weaponizes mushrooms against humans — a global disaster of our own making. But in reality, if you scratch just below the surface of our fear, you’ll find quite the opposite: an almost unreasonable expectation that mushrooms will rescue us, clean up our messes, do our dirty work and reverse all of the damage we’re doing to the earth. It’s true that there are species capable of breaking down oils in saltwater, absorbing radiation and cleaning toxins from the soil, though it’s also true that they might have better things to do.A handful of shaggy parasols, a common mushroom with a tousled cap.Deagostini Picture Library / Getty ImagesMushrooms are the fruiting bodies of the mycelium, rootlike threads that connect underground in a vast mycorrhizal matrix so complex, intelligent and essential, Mr. Stamets has called it “the neurological network of nature.”That material, which also stores large amounts of carbon underground and can help plant life survive drought and other stress, is being used to develop alternatives to leathers, plastics, packaging and building materials. (Adidas made a concept shoe using a mycelium-based material last year, which led the company to discuss its “journey to create a more sustainable world.”)Lately, we expect mushrooms to save us, too. The zealous interest in adaptogenic mushrooms — fungi species used medicinally for centuries in China and other parts of Asia — has created an international market for lion’s mane, reishi, chaga and cordyceps. We turn to mushrooms to ease our anxiety, to help us focus, to make us happier and more open-minded, to make us horny, to make our skin glow, to enhance our memory, to get us to sleep.Mushrooms are magnificent. But maybe anxiety over a fictional fungus reflects a flickering awareness that we are, in fact, asking a bit too much of them.Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Pinterest. Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice. More