Published in 2023
262 pages
8 hours and 39 minutes
Emily Monosson is the author of Natural Defense, Unnatural Selection, and Evolution in a Toxic World. She is a member of the Ronin Institute for Independent Scholarship and an adjunct faculty member at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She lives in Montague, Massachusetts.
What is this book about?
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, and a lesson in seeing life on our planet with renewed humility and awe.
