July 2023 MBR The Health/Medicine Shelf

The Health/Medicine Shelf

Blight: Fungi and the Coming Pandemic
Emily Monosson
W. W. Norton & Company
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110
www.wwnorton.com
9781324007012, $28.95, HC, 272pp

https://www.amazon.com/Blight-Coming-Pandemic-Emily-Monosson/dp/132400701X

Synopsis: A fungus is any member of the group of eukaryotic organisms that includes microorganisms such as yeasts and molds, as well as the more familiar mushrooms. These organisms are classified as a kingdom, separately from the other eukaryotic kingdoms, which, by one traditional classification, includes Plantae, Animalia, Protozoa, and Chromista. (Wikipedia)

Fungi are everywhere. Most are harmless; some are helpful. A few are killers. Collectively, infectious fungi are the most devastating agents of disease on earth, and a fungus that can persist in the environment without its host is here to stay.

With the publication of "Blight: Fungi and the Coming Pandemic", academician Emily Monosson documents how trade, travel, and a changing climate are making us all more vulnerable to invasion. Populations of bats, frogs, and salamanders face extinction.

In the Northwest, America's beloved national parks are covered with the spindly corpses of whitebark pines. Food crops are under siege, threatening our coffee, bananas, and wheat -- and, more broadly, our global food security.

Candida auris, drug-resistant and resilient, infects hospital patients and those with weakened immune systems. Coccidioides, which lives in drier dusty regions, may cause infection in apparently healthy people. These horrors go on and on.

Yet prevention is not impossible. Tracing the history of fungal spread and the most recent discoveries in the field, Monosson meets with scientists who are working tirelessly to protect species under threat, and whose innovative approaches to fungal invasion have the potential to save human lives. Delving into case studies at once fascinating, sobering, and hopeful, "Blight: Fungi and the Coming Pandemic" serves as a wake-up call, a reminder of the delicate interconnectedness of the natural world, and a lesson in seeing life on our planet with renewed humility and awe.

Critique: Informatively enhanced for the reader with the inclusion of a two page bibliography of Further Readings, thirty-two pages of Notes, and a fourteen page Index, "Blight: Fungi and the Coming Pandemic" is exceptionally well written, organized, and presented -- making it ideal for students, academia, and non-specialist general readers with an interest in the subject. While also available for personal reading lists in a digital book format (Kindle, $14.99), "Blight: Fungi and the Coming Pandemic" is unreservedly recommended for both community and academic library Health/Medicine collections and supplemental curriculum Parasitology studies lists.

Editorial Note: Emily Monosson is the author of Natural Defense, Unnatural Selection, and Evolution in a Toxic World. She is a member of the Ronin Institute for Independent Scholarship and an adjunct faculty member at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She has a an online web page at https://eco.umass.edu/people/adjunct-faculty/monosson-emily

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