Customer Reviews

North American Mushrooms: A Field Guide to Edible and Inedible Fungi (Falconguide)

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4 star:		(9)
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This is a good book in the right hands. If you are looking for the definative book on mushrooms, it hasn't been published. The closest equivalent to definative is the David Arora Mushrooms Demystified. This book by Miller is a FIELD GUIDE (and maybe 1/5 the size and weight of Demystified), it is very, very short on the number of species covered ('only' hundreds out of thousands). Do not use this book to decide if you have harvested an edible mushroom. There are a great many edible mushrooms that look like a great many inedible and poisonious mushrooms and YOU CANNOT DO IDENTIFICATION BY COMPARING PICTURES.

Understand I am not in any way dissing this book; Miller knew his stuff, and this is an excellent guide. I bought a copy when it was first available, and it has already seen several days in the field. I learned about it from a well respected expert who had also purchased a copy. But I also already had a well used copy of Arora, and I have been foraging for many years, and I have gotten instruction from people like Larry Evens, Gary Lincoff and David Arora, and I STILL MAKE MISTAKES. The critical feature of a field guide is the Key that walks you through the identification process. This book (Miller) has a somewhat simplier key, that I can run through quickly (and larger type which is nice for old eyes in the middle of the forest). I would never eat off the identification from this book or any other. I have already found semi-common specimens where I know the species, that Miller doesn't cover. It's a nice addition to a library that also includes something specific for your region, plus Arora's Demystified. I would take the time to put a plastic cover on it, and it is a good bit heavier than the Audubon guide. However, if it comes to it, I will be carrying this guide in my backpack rather than any of the others I own (and I own a bunch of mushroom books).

This is a good book on identifying common mushrooms but please be aware that you cannot learn to truly do this without learning from an expert--either someone who has extensive field training under an expert or is an accomplished academic in the area themselves. My training came from the late great, amateur mycologist, Herb Saylor, and also the eminent professor, Dr. Harry Thiers. I took all of Dr. Thiers's mycology classes back in the early 80s before he retired, and it was an honor and a priviledge to study under him (although I was a psychobiology major, I wanted to learn something about botany and mycology). I have many good general mycology field guides in my library but none are a substitute for an experienced expert. That having been said, Miller covers many of the important species in this book, although for brevity's sake many less common species were omitted. All in all a decent field guide if you remember never to eat anything you are not absolutely sure of. Remember, "When in doubt, throw it out."

Overall, this book is great for the beginner. It includes great color photographs of every mushroom covered. Though it contains only 180 species of mushrooms across North America, it is still a great field guide for the beginner. The book also contains a very easy and clear-cut method for classifying the mushrooms that you found. It is definitely good classification and identification practice for the beginner. Overall, it is a good field guide with nice color pictures.

[A note on my perspective -- I'm interested in learning about, identifying and collecting all species of mushrooms, whether they're edible or not. This review is generally geared toward people like me, with a broad interest. If you just want to collect chanterelles and morels, there may be better options.]

I've been mushroom hunting for two years now and this is the fourth mushrooming book I've owned. I have looked at a number of other guides in bookstores and libraries. The first two books you should buy are "Mushrooms Demystified" (MD) and "All the Rain Promises and More," both by Arora. Demystified is the bible, and All the Rain is the pocket book that slips into your back pocket when you're out in the field. The two books are linked, e.g. "to learn more [about a mushroom in Rain] see MD pages xxx-xxx.

This Falcon guide is a good supplement, and has many more color pictures than either of the Arora books (which are fun to look at, but should NOT be used to identify mushrooms). There are two major upsides to this book:

First, it almost exclusively uses scientific terminology and names. If you look at enough books and talk to enough people, it's easy to get confused by mushrooms that have five different common names. Although the Arora guides supply the scientific terms too, he also uses common names a lot. The Falcon guide basically forces you to learn scientific names and terminology which is important to avoid confusion and possibly risky mistakes.

Second, the authors of the Falcon guide have personally collected and sampled a large number of the mushrooms featured in their book. They can provide a unique perspective about the edibility and habitat of mushrooms identified through the Arora books. Other than the mushrooms I'm already very familiar with, I'll definitely be using the Falcon guide to learn a bit more about any mushroom I bring home to identify.

If only one field guide to North American mushrooms is to be obtained for a reference holding, make it NORTH AMERICAN MUSHROOMS: A FIELD GUIDE TO EDIBLE AND INEDIBLE FUNGI. Over six hundred color photos and line drawings offer important identification keys and a comprehensive survey of where and how to gather wild mushrooms. Pictorial keys throughout enhance suggestions for location and identification as well as culinary use, and come from one of the most respected mycologists in this country, also a professor of Botany and Curator of Fungi. He's written six books on fungi and has authored 105 new species new to science in his papers: his is a masterpiece including sturdy binding for solid field use.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

I like the format of this book with the description under the very nice pictures and the use of the scientific names rather then the common names like the Audubon Guide. It won't take the place of Mushrooms Demystified by David Arora, but it will add to a library of field guides.

I own several mushroom identification books, but this is my favorite! The entire book is based off an amazingly easy to follow dichotomous key that makes it easy for anyone with a basic understanding of taxonomy to identify specimens quickly and accurately. It also lets you know which are poisonous (let's be honest: that's most of what we want to know anyway.)

We are amateurs who like to take pictures and identify as many MR/fungi as we can. We own several other guides. This one is very good, and well worth adding to your reference collection. Many excellent color photos. Good Index and Identification Key. This book also has something no other guide has: a "guaranteed binding". I wish they all were like this, because most of our other MR and Wildflower guides have pages falling out of them after a year or more use. Really good value for the price as well.

North American Mushrooms: A Field Guide to Edible and Inedible Fungi (Falconguide) I attended a class on identifying mushrooms and this book was highly recomended and I under stand why. it is a very good book on this topic.

The North American Mushroom Guide has been very helpful in our spring time mushroom hunting ventures. We were able to identify many different types of edidble and un edible varieties. We were able to collect and eat several types: morels, snowball, cauliflour fungi. The Morels were far the best.