Customer Reviews

Simon & Schuster's Guide to Mushrooms (Nature Guide Series)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

After struggling in the field using this guide, I almost gave up trying to identify mushrooms. Then I checked the publishing info and found it was written in Spain with photo credits from London, Milano, Paris....This is a European translation from the early 80's, don't make the mistake I did!

I then randomly opened the book and ran a search on the mushroom on the page: Cortinarius Albovioceus My search led to a mushroom expert's site that said this mushroom is found in Scandinavia and no specimen to the expert's knowledge was ever been found in North America.

But I should say that the book has great photos that could be used as a secondary verification of an identity.

I happen to love mushrooms and am very into identifying the ones that grow in my backyard. This book was a lot more helpful to me than any of the others I found. The beginning is extremely informative, and the species guide is huge-about 240 great pictures! No book can list every one, but this one covers a great many, especially common ones you're likely to see. Get it-it's a good buy.

This book not only has clear color pictures of over 400 different kinds of mushrooms and other fungi, it also lists habitats, seasons when the listed mushrooms grow, and edibility. The book also explains the reproductive cycle of mushrooms, and how they help to break down organic matter into soil minerals. This book will not make you an expert on mushrooms, and I would not recommend collecting wild mushrooms for consumption because many deadly ones look very similar to edible ones, but all in all, this is the best book on the subject I have seen so far!

I bought this book after someone showed it to me. After quickly looking at it and seeing the format I thought I would really like it, but I don't! I was surprised to open the book to the Pleurotus ostreatus and seeing it in the photo as a very dark brown mushroom. My four other field guides (and the only way I have seen it in the field) show it as a very pretty whitish mushroom like the one this book describes as the Pleurotus cornucopiae. I wonder were the descriptions mixed up or is this how they are in Italy where the book was first written and published. A very disappointing book! I should have read the copy right page and then I would have known that it was not a field guide for North America. I will stick with Mushrooms Demystified by David Arora and the Audubon Field Guide.

Caveat: I do not own this book.

I was thinking about buying it but was put off by a comment on Dave Fischer's web page: "Simon & Schuster's Guide to Mushrooms is not a good choice for use as a field guide in North America; it is a translation of an Italian work, hence is not a very useful identification manual for this continent. It is, however, a great general-interest mushroom book, with excellent introductory information."

Amazon's great "Search inside this book" feature confirmed it. The copyright page shows "Translation of Funghi" ... "Pacioni, Giovanni", "English translation by Simon Pleasance".

This book has nice mushroom information. Some good photos. But it is difficult to use as a field guide and often does not have the mushrooms that I find in the forest. I live in the southeast US and many mushrooms I find simply aren't listed.
Worth buying if you want to read about mushrooms. Serves as a "decent" but not "great" field guide.
Don't expect to buy this, head into the woods, and start identifying mushrooms. Fungus is difficult to identify and I find it better to take my own photos and then use multiple, online sites to compare photos.
Again-- a good read. A good book. Not a very useful field guide for the southeast US.

In fact, I use this as a visual reference for drawing. It gives large, clear photos of each species, and hundreds are shown.

I'm not sure how much this will help the amateur mushroom-hunter, though. It certainly won't do much for a pro. The description of each species is short and bland. The real strength of this book is the photos that show the unique features of each species, and even each specimen.

Execelent photos! However, the book tells you that it's o.k. to experiment with the amanita family-not a good idea when starting out or even for a pretty good mushroom hunter unless you want a one way trip through the great golden gates of heven!

Another guide written by Simon and Schuster, and another success. This mushroom field guide has a significant number of species listings for decent identification. Easily equals Audubon, Peterson, and other guides in detailed descriptions, photo quality, and abundance of species listed. Over 420 in all. Each mushroom is labeled with a botanical name, since beginners should stick with Golden Guides. The mushrooms shown are intriguing, and make you ponder eating them as the night's meal. The guide also explains the edibility, quality of it, and whether it is lethal. There are also descriptions of range and habitat. Habitat is indicated by a drawing on the bottom left hand of the species page. The redundancy of the Simon and Schuster system is indicated in the text, but this has never mattered, as the system is fine for expert field guide users. The underrated history of the book is unexplained, but should not have been so.
The two press editions of the guide are different in a couple of ways. The older, Nature Series Press, has aged photos, which makes the photo quality darker. However, the brand new, revised press, done by Simon and Schuster themselves, is the best yet. The photo quality is also pristine. Any edition of this contribution to field identification will prove useful for mushroom hunters and plant experts alike.

This was my first mushroom identification book. The large color photos are great. The language was way over my head, but there is a glossary in the back which helped me get up to speed. Eventually I realized this is not the greatest resource for the North American mushroom hunter. Many species are exclusively European, while many common North American Varieties are excluded.
Bottom line? If it's on sale, buy it. If not, pass it by.