Anthropology

Brewed from the dried leaves and tender shoots of an evergreen tree native to South America, yerba mate gives its drinkers the jolt of liquid effervescence many of us get from coffee or tea.

The first time someone from North America tries yerba mate in the traditional style, with a gourd or cattle horn stuffed with smokey green leaves and the metal drinking straw, we often break one of the unwritten rules of the South American drink.

What a Mushroom Lives For takes us beyond the animal realm to explore a place barely known to most people, the inner realm of fungi and how they participate in making the world around them via their relations to microbes, other fungi, plants, and animals.

On the high plains of western Kansas, there is no clear line between water and second chances. Although I didn’t know it at the time, I was in search of both when I turned my Prius off a two-lane highway and onto the washboard gravel that led back to the farm.

Each day throughout the year, the tour buses begin arriving at Megiddo soon after 9:00 a.m., disgorging fifty tourists at a time. By the time the site closes at 5:00 p.m., several dozen buses will have deposited hundreds of visitors. “Welcome to Armageddon,” the tour guides say, as they march their flocks up the steep incline and through the ancient city gate.