{"title":"Informational Works","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"digital-product-11","title":"The Forgotten Orchard: Remembering What Nearly Vanished","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e \u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Forgotten Orchard: A History of the Plants We Nearly Lost — and the People Who Wouldn't Let Them Go\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e(Print available soon on Amazon)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the winter of 1941, nine scientists in besieged Leningrad starved to death guarding a seed collection they refused to eat.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTheir story is the first of twenty-three others like it — plants that carried empires, fed famines, built fortunes, and vanished almost without a trace, saved in the end not by luck but by people who simply refused to look away.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Forgotten Orchard is a work of narrative history built around a single, deceptively simple premise: the plant is never the protagonist. The people are. Across six movements — wars and sieges, empire and forced migration, the reckoning of monoculture, quiet sanctuaries, Indigenous stewardship, and the science of rediscovery — this book follows real, documented history across five continents and three thousand years:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA Roman emperor eating the last stalk of the ancient world's most valuable plant, ending it forever\u003cbr\u003eA Cherokee family carrying a pocketful of beans through the Trail of Tears\u003cbr\u003eAn orphaned Kazakh stable boy who spent fifty secret years protecting a scientific discovery that had already cost his mentor his life\u003cbr\u003eA single wild coffee shrub in Sierra Leone, found after sixty-four years of silence, that may hold the key to feeding a coffee industry threatened by climate change\u003cbr\u003eA tree presumed extinct for ninety million years, found alive in a hidden Australian canyon by an off-duty park ranger\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEach chapter reads as its own complete story — richly researched, narratively driven, built from primary sources, letters, court records, and the documented words of the people who actually lived it. Together, they build toward a single question this book asks again and again, in twenty-three different forms:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhat nearly disappeared — and why does it still matter today?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor readers of narrative nonfiction, environmental history, and books that turn overlooked corners of the past into stories you won't want to put down.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e \u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Smith'n Shrooms","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43205466914891,"sku":null,"price":9.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0671\/5047\/9435\/files\/thumbnail.png?v=1789618569"},{"product_id":"digital-product-12","title":"Curious Harvest: 80 strange, true, and half-true stories about what's in the world's pantry","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eCurious Harvest: Eighty Strange, True, and Half-True Stories Hidden in the World's Pantry\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e(Print available soon on Amazon)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAn emperor spent his final years chasing a mushroom that promised immortality. He never got it. A Roman fortune the size of an empire vanished because one plant simply ran out. A cheese from Sardinia is legally banned across the entire European Union — and Sardinians make it anyway, on purpose, with the maggots still alive inside.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eCurious Harvest\u003c\/i\u003e is a collection of eighty short, wonder-first stories about the strangest, darkest, funniest, and most surprising things humans have ever believed about food — and the real history hiding underneath those beliefs. Every chapter opens with a scene and no names attached, so you find out what you're actually reading about right alongside the reveal. From there, each story digs into where the legend came from, what's actually documented, and why people needed to believe it in the first place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eInside, you'll find:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe Icelandic shark that's poisonous fresh and beloved fermented — made from an animal that may have been alive since before the American Revolution\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe real reason garlic wards off vampires (and the modern medical theory for where the legend actually came from)\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eA Persian spice trade lie so effective it fooled Greek and Roman buyers for a thousand years\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe popular \"fact\" about spinach and iron that turns out to be a myth about a myth\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eA Welsh funeral tradition where a stranger was paid to eat a dead man's sins\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe bean-and-cake ritual that traces an unbroken line from ancient Rome to modern Mardi Gras\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWhy an entire Aztec grain was banned under threat of severed hands — and how it survived anyway\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSpanning every inhabited continent and several thousand years of human history, \u003ci\u003eCurious Harvest\u003c\/i\u003e treats food as what it has always actually been: a window into what people feared, worshipped, fought over, and couldn't live without. Each chapter stands entirely on its own — read it cover to cover, or open it anywhere and start.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you've ever wondered why a fairy tale, a folk remedy, or a dinner-table \"fact\" sounds a little too good to be entirely true, this book is for you.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Smith'n Shrooms","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43205482905675,"sku":null,"price":34.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0671\/5047\/9435\/files\/thumbnail_bbece856-f4c5-426d-bc8c-0b9a45997348.png?v=1789619007"},{"product_id":"digital-product-13","title":"Forged Through Time: A Historical Atlas of Nature and Humanity","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e(Print available soon on Amazon)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat if history's greatest witness was never a king, an empire, or a monument?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat if it was the landscape itself?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eForged Through Time\u003c\/i\u003e follows humanity's relationship with the natural world from the first foragers to the modern age, revealing how forests, rivers, fields, and oceans quietly shaped the course of civilization. Through twenty-four narrative chapters and eight chronological movements, this book explores the discoveries, observations, and relationships that allowed people to survive, build societies, exchange knowledge, and transform the world around them.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRather than focusing only on rulers and wars, \u003ci\u003eForged Through Time\u003c\/i\u003e asks a different question:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eWhat was nature teaching while history was happening?\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGrounded in archaeology, historical research, and ecological understanding, each chapter blends engaging storytelling with documented evidence to uncover the enduring partnership between humanity and the living world. Along the way, readers encounter the first foragers, the birth of agriculture, ancient trade routes, monastery gardens, global exploration, industrial change, conservation movements, and the growing recognition that many of history's oldest lessons still surround us today.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is not a survival guide.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt is not a field guide.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt is a journey through history told from the perspective of the landscape itself.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhether you are fascinated by history, archaeology, ecology, or simply enjoy seeing familiar stories from a new perspective, \u003ci\u003eForged Through Time\u003c\/i\u003e offers an invitation to slow down, observe more closely, and rediscover the world that has always been quietly shaping our own.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Smith'n Shrooms","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43205492113483,"sku":null,"price":6.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0671\/5047\/9435\/files\/thumbnail_4bcacfa8-4ccc-4769-a854-393d61853166.png?v=1789619743"}],"url":"https:\/\/smithnshrooms.com\/collections\/informational-works.oembed","provider":"Smith'n Shrooms","version":"1.0","type":"link"}