Shroom review

I’ve just finished reading Andy Letcher’s recent “cultural history of the magic mushroom”, Shroom. It’s a valuable book, despite some general (and quite deep) reservations I have about it if it’s taken as anything like a self-contained “definitive” survey. To a large extent it’s a timely, tactical piece, aiming to shake of some hoary countercultural and academic myths, and establish modern Western mushroom use on a more demonstrably justifiable basis than any of the questionable “foundational myths” of mushrooms in history and prehistory. It loses some very valuable perspective along the way… but more of that in my review.