National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms

A must have for serious study. I like this version for ALL the content, details, pictures, & portable size. It's a bit large to carry in my daily foraging pack (see picture), but small enough that it will easily be back at the car for further research after a day's outing if needed. The 1st 25% ish is pictures (see pictures), the remainder is all the accompanying details (see picture). Overall a great book to have to help learn this fascinating world of mycology.

Lots of great obscure knowledge, great for the outdoorsman or the general nerd. Really helpful for identifying edible and non-edible mushrooms

I should first make clear that I'm just getting into the subject of mushrooms. I got this basically because I wanted pictures, and I was hoping the NAS name was still reliable.I read other reviews before I bought it, and I don't really know about the use of fake names, since I wouldn't know the difference. I don't really understand why they would, so I'm wondering if perhaps that was a misunderstanding or even poor proofing of the book. As long as the names on the pix match the text I'm good, and the ones I spot checked did. I don't plan on getting involved in any clubs or anything, so I chose to not consider that aspect in my own review.The pix are great,very clear and it worked for me trying to find out what the ones in my back yard are. I actually took to their 'thumb guide' pretty well, so I like that. (They put the pix in groups and gave page ranges for each group, identified by a little icon unique to each) It's bound quite nicely, but all that means for me is I'm going to feel bad when I get it messed up trying to use it on our next camping trip. Would be great in someone's library though, so some might call it a plus.

This, like other Audubon Field Guides, is compact *700 pages plus), packed with information and beautiful photos. It is well-bound on high quality stock. I bought for our oldest daughter who has an interest in mycology. I can also give a five star review for the Trees of North America volume and the Rocks and Minerals book. I find myself referencing these several times a week. The Mushrooms book has been out of print , I think, and was selling for outrageous prices on both Amazon and eBay. Glad to see it's back!

I own three mushroom field guides now and if I had to choose only one it would definitely be this one. This field guide has 762 well photographed and very nicely printed pictures of 703 species of mushrooms and has a sturdy faux leather plastic cover although the pages are not waterproof so don't expose this book to rain. It has a section addressing poisonous mushrooms and another on edible mushrooms as well as a pore print chart which is invaluable. hallucinogenic mushrooms are addressed individually. Each mushroom has at least one full color photograph that is linked to a short description of the mushroom, its identifying features, its habitat and its edibility if applicable.The organization of this book is brilliant. I'm sure scientists would be almost driven to group species of mushrooms together regardless of appearance but this guide helps one find the description of a mushroom by appearance. The photos are divided into 14 classes based on typical shapes and then the photo page numbers are linked to the shapes. Amanita mushrooms have several different distinctive shapes so each shape has it's own section. Polypores are another example and have three sections, one that deals with polypores that are shaped like typical mshrooms, one section that deals with stalked polypores that are less regularly shaped and another that deals with shelf like or bracket type polypores and other shelflike fungi. It sounds complex but isn't generally all that difficult.One can also work the other way and use the index to look up a fungus by name.There's literally a ton of valuable and interesting information crammed into this book and it's a great learning tool on its own..

An amateur interest in the natural world inevitably leads to a growing collection of books and field guides, and this is especially true for the amateur mycologist. With around 11,000 named species of mushrooms in the US, no one book can be a complete guide, and to make things more difficult, species are constantly being reclassified. (To make things worse, a lot of the mushroom guides sold here are reprints of older books with out of date information, or books written for the European market, where there is a very different range of species. ) The beginner is best served with a simple field guide to the more common species, while the serious amateur will eventually pick up a copy of Arora’s Mushrooms Demystified, an encyclopedic guide to over 2,000 species. The NAS field guide falls somewhere in the middle with 762 color photographs of individual mushrooms, a section containing detailed descriptions of the mushrooms, their habitat, and other details, as well as a guide to mushroom features, spore prints, and more.This is a very good book, but it lacks the detail of more exhaustive texts like the Arora book, and the photos, while good, show only one example of each species. I would definite not recommend using it as my sole guide to edible mushrooms- for that, I recommend Michael Kuo’s “100 Edible Mushrooms,” or for absolute beginners, “How To Forage for Mushrooms Without Dying” by Frank Hyman. It’s also too big and heavy to carry in your pocket every time you go out in the woods- for that I’d recommend Arora’s “All That The Rain Promises and More.” Instead, this is a book to carry in your day pack on hikes, or perhaps to leave at camp, in your summer cabin, or in your car, for consultation when you return from a hike with samples or photos of unknown species.