As someone who delights in odd facts and has a curiosity about the underpinnings of our natural world, I found Moore's book to be the perfect blend of summary and specific detail, delivered in a relaxed and mischievious style. I've been on a quest for this type of book for a long time, both for personal pleasure and for research for my writing: one that went beyond the basic mushroom guide but that did not stray so far into the area of advanced scientific research that I could not follow it. Moore knows how to strike the right balance between entertainment and science in doling out the facts. I took great delight in chapter titles such as Toxins: Kill the Primates, Rule the World; Blights, Rusts, Bunts, and Mycoses; Decay and Degradation; and The Old Kingdom in Time and Space. Learning, for example, that rabbits can eat some mushrooms humans cannot is an innocuous enough fact--but learning that the Victorian cure for eating poison mushrooms consisted of downing a combination of raw rabbit stomachs and brains mixed with jam...well, that's simply the kind of detail that distinguishes an excellent book from a good book. Perhaps the best thing about the book is Moore's comfort level. He is so comfortable with this material that he revels in it--and this results in numerous corresponding delights for the reader. I have collected over two dozen books on fungi and this one is the best of the lot.