How to Forage for Mushrooms Without Dying by Frank Hyman

How to Forage for Mushrooms Without Dying: An Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Identifying 29 Wild, Edible Mushrooms by Frank Hyman

Overview

Use Frank Hyman’s glorious hand-sized handbook, brimming with clear photos + even clearer advice, is an absolute joy to read! This book is truly a beginner’s guide with content meant to steer new hunters toward better success + an avoidance of inedible ‘shrooms as time-wasters. Learn to identify 29 wild mushrooms with no formal training.

Hyman’s included a checklist at the end of each species to ensure you’re weeding out look-alikes before consumption. Food handling discussion + poisoning information right at the front, getting the right things first, then we dive straight into an anatomy lesson to ensure we’re talking about the same parts. Included are many photo samples featuring different species to visually show how the parts vary. Hyman teaches proper field etiquette along with the useful tools mushroom hunters carry, ensuring there are more mushrooms, not less, for future hunters.

Small enough to pack, thick with details, this perfectly-sized field guide tucks easily into a rucksack + the paper feels nice, waterproof even.

“…[I]t isn’t really the mushroom that’s dangerous – it’s the careless mushroom hunter that is.”

– Frank Hyman, How to Forage for Mushrooms Without Dying

As a mushroom-obsessed person, I notice these beauties everywhere I go. Last year while camping in the woods, my kids and I must’ve found 25 different species. We were stumped. This camping season, I’ll be pulling this field guide out of my pack to label some of our finds, + I am super excited about it!

“There are old mushroom hunters. There are bold mushroom hunters. But there are no old AND bold mushroom hunters.”

– Old forager saying, used on page 36 of How to Forage for Mushrooms Without Dying

Who is this book written for?

Beginning foragers who want a compact, picture-filled book they can pack along on their adventures, one they can rely on to identify some edible ‘shrooms.