bold letters, and an illustrated glossary and references. Te book’s habitat is New York City and, in fact, the authors use a New York MetroCard for scale, but it’s equally useful for other large urban areas in North America. I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and recognize a number of the species in the book from my local sauntering. Indeed, the book includes several foliose lichens that, in my ignorance, I would have called Flavoparmelia caperata, a ubiquitous urban lichen. One of my few quibbles with


Urban Lichens: A Field Guide for Northeastern North


America Jessica L. Allen and James C. Lendemer 2021, Yale University Press ISBN 10 978-0-300-252994 ISBN 13 978-0-300-262-996 Paperback, 168 pages $26.00 US Dimensions: 5.3 x .05 X 8.3 inches


I


f lichens are sometimes referred to as “the rainbow of the forest,” they


could also be called “the fog bow of the city,” since they’re less charismatic as well as less present in urban areas. At last we have a field guide devoted to their existence in cities and also a field guide that documents the negative effect of urban pollutants on them. Is it tolerant or sensitive to bad air quality? the authors ask of most of the book’s species. Admittedly, those authors didn’t seem to have monitored pollutants and then correlated their monitoring with the occurrence (or lack thereof) of lichen species, but this is a book for citizen scientists who probably aren’t interested in statistics. Urban Lichens is divided into three


simple sections: lichen basics (biology, chemistry, morphology, etc.), species descriptions with common names in big


54 FUNGI Volume 15:1 Winter 2022


Urban Lichens is the quality of the photos, especially of crustose lichens. Fortunately, there are small squares with good close-ups of most of the book’s murky-looking photos, but why, I wonder, didn’t the authors use only the close-ups? Another quibble: the book includes Phaeocalicium polyporaeum, a species once considered a lichen but now considered a mycocalicioid fungus. Although the text states that it grows on Trametes versicolor (probably a pilfer from lichenportal.org), it’s been documented almost exclusively on Trichaptum biforme. Oh well. Lichenologists and mycologists commonly make errors when obliged to consider each other’s disciplines. All in all, the book does a good job of


investigating a bellwether of ecological health in urban areas. As lichens are slowly but surely returning to cities where the air is becoming cleaner, I can imagine a more capacious second edition of Urban Lichens coming out in the not too distant future. -Lawrence Millman


Life at the Edge of Sight: A Photographic Exploration of the


Microbial World Scott Chimileski and Roberto Kolter 2017, Harvard University Press ISBN: 9780674975910 384 pages; Hardcover 176 color illustrations, 35 halftones $35, £28.95, €31.50 Dimensions 7 3/8 x 8 1/4 inches


“C


ontemplating the microbial world requires us to reboot


our brains.” So opens the Foreword by renowned microbiologist Moselio “Elio”


Schaechter, to this beautiful book on the subject, Life at the Edge of Sight by Scott Chimileski and Roberto Kolter. “When considering what microbes do, it’s easier to ask what they don’t do. Tey have transformed this planet—its geology, its atmosphere, and its climate. Tey are essential to life and to its evolution … No single book can do justice to the vastness of microbial experience. But it can act as an ambassador, sharing stories that illuminate that otherwise unseen world. Tis is what readers will find here. Te authors’ grand tour introduces readers to microbes with engaging tales, each introducing a foundational concept or two,” Schaechter continues. And all along the way one visually stunning page after another. Indeed, as it was explained to me by one of the authors (RK), the concept of the project was to be a photographic tour of the microbial world—their final product is an absolute success. Life at the Edge of Sight is lavishly visual, and printed on rather large, high quality glossy paper; most of the space on any given spread is occupied by photos. Te authors are Scott Chimileski,


a science photographer and Assistant Professor of Microbiology at Paul Smith’s College (aka College of the Adirondacks) (he’s also Guest Curator of Microbial Life at the Harvard Museum of Natural History) and Roberto Kolter. Kolter is a Professor at Harvard Medical School and Co-Director of Harvard’s Microbial Sciences Initiative. His name is likely familiar to you as he is a co-blogger at Small Tings Considered, along with founder Elio Schaechter. Schaechter (who wrote the book’s Foreword) is


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