• Blight

  • Fungi and the Coming Pandemic
  • By: Emily Monosson
  • Narrated by: Rosemary Benson
  • Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
  • 4.2 out of 5 stars (17 ratings)

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Blight  By  cover art

Blight

By: Emily Monosson
Narrated by: Rosemary Benson
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Publisher's summary

A prescient warning about the mysterious and deadly world of fungi—and how to avert further loss across species, including our own.

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 for the long haul. In gripping, accessible prose, Emily Monosson documents how changing climate, trade, and travel are making us all more vulnerable to invasion. Populations of bats, frogs, and salamanders face extinction, and scientists don't have a cure. 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. In humans, Candida auris infects hospital patients and those with weakened immune systems. Monosson's critical reporting demonstrates that prevention is difficult, but not impossible. Exposing the connection between pathogens and human action, Blight serves as a wake-up call, a reminder of the delicate interconnectedness of the natural world.

©2023 Emily Monosson (P)2023 Tantor

Dear Listener,

Why is this an especially important topic for anyone to learn about?
" Blight is about killer fungi, but it is also about trees, wildlife, food, and human health. In short, it is about how we influence the environment and how our environs impact us. For a long time, we were taught that our lives are somewhat separate from those of plants and animals. That isn’t the case. We are a part of the natural world even if we tend to live and think as if we are separate. So, learning about how our actions enable fungal pathogens to find new hosts (including us) and sometimes cause catastrophic pandemics, I think, is an awareness that we should carry with us as we move about the world, grow food, and explore field and forest. We do not live apart from nature but in it, and that has consequences. Imagine if we all lived a little bit “lighter” on the planet." - Emily Monsoon, writer of Blight

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Illuminating

If you’re not worried about fungi in a ever warming and interconnected world you will be after this book

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