The Mushroom at the End of the World

A beautifully strange study of a rare mushroom that becomes a lens on global capitalism and ecological ruin.

This is not just a book about matsutake mushrooms—it’s an exploration of life in the ruins of capitalism, of human and non-human collaboration, of resilience in fragmented worlds.

Tsing’s ethnography moves through forests, labor camps, and Japanese markets to examine how economic precarity and environmental damage shape our world. A profound and genre-defying academic work that reads like a poetic field journal.