Veterans of wild mushrooming quickly graduate to author David Arora's other masterpiece, Mushrooms Demystified, which is the undisputed bible of mushroom knowledge in North America. Where Rain is breezy and succinct, Demystified is encyclopedic and exhaustive. You take Rains out to the mushrooms in the woods; you bring the mysterious ones back to the heavy Demystifed tome at your kitchen table.

-- KK

Mushrooms Demystified
David Arora
1986, 1020 pages
$26
Amazon

Sample excerpts:

Boletus appendiculatur (Butter Bolete); pores normally stain blue when bruised.

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LBM's: Little Brown Mushrooms

The cap is brown, the stem a shade browner, the gills browner still. This can be said of nearly one half of all the mushrooms you find. On even the most casual jaunt through the woods, you'll find dozens and dozens of Little Brown Mushrooms sprouting at your feet, and very likely under them as well. The fact is, Little Brown Mushrooms ("LBM's") are so overwhelmingly abundant and uncompromisingly undistinguished that it is more than just futile for the beginner to attempt to identify them -- it is downright foolish.