How to Forage for Mushrooms without Dying: An Absolute Beginner's Guide to Identifying 29 Wild, Edible Mushrooms

In this accessible, photographic guide for the beginner forager, professional mushroom hunter Frank Hyman teaches how to definitively identify the most readily available, edible mushrooms.

"Arming readers with knowledge and a bit of caution, Hyman does a spectacular job uncovering the joys of this woodland wonder." ―Publishers Weekly

With the surging interest in foraging for mushrooms, those new to the art need a reliable guide to distinguishing the safe fungi from the toxic. But for beginner foragers who just want to answer the question “Can I eat it?”, most of the books on the subject are dry, dense, and written by mycologists for other mycologists.

Frank Hyman to the rescue! How to Forage for Mushrooms without Dying is the book for anyone who walks in the woods and would like to learn how to identify just the 29 edible mushrooms they’re likely to come across. In it, Hyman offers his expert mushroom foraging advice, distilling down the most important information for the reader in colorful, folksy language that’s easy to remember when in the field.

Want an easy way to determine if a mushroom is a delicious morel or a toxic false morel? Slice it in half ―“if it’s hollow, you can swallow,” Hyman says. With Frank Hyman’s expert advice and easy-to-follow guidelines, readers will be confident in identifying which mushrooms they can safely eat and which ones they should definitely avoid.

Frank Hyman is a professional mushroom hunter, certified to sell wild mushrooms to the public. He teaches workshops across the country on mushroom foraging and identification and has written about mushroom foraging for publications such as Paleo magazine, Hobby Farms, and Modern Farmer. He is a member of the North American Mycological Association, lives in Durham, North Carolina, and forages everywhere he travels.