How the prized matsutake mushroom is remaking human communities in China-and providing new ways
to understand human and more-than-human worlds What a Mushroom Lives For pushes today's
mushroom renaissance in compelling new directions. For centuries Western science has promoted
a human- and animal-centric framework of what counts as action agency movement and behavior.
But as Michael Hathaway shows the world-making capacities of mushrooms radically challenge
this orthodoxy by revealing the lively dynamism of all forms of life. The book tells the
fascinating story of one particularly prized species the matsutake and the astonishing ways
it is silently yet powerfully shaping worlds from the Tibetan plateau to the mushrooms' final
destination in Japan. Many Tibetan and Yi people have dedicated their lives to picking and
selling this mushroom-a delicacy that drives a multibillion-dollar global trade network and
that still grows only in the wild despite scientists' intensive efforts to cultivate it in
urban labs. But this is far from a simple story of humans exploiting a passive edible
commodity. Rather the book reveals the complex symbiotic ways that mushrooms plants humans
and other animals interact. It explores how the world looks to the mushrooms as well as to the
people who have grown rich harvesting them. A surprise-filled journey into science and human
culture this exciting and provocative book shows how fungi shape our planet and our lives in
strange diverse and often unimaginable ways.
