In 1885, while riding horseback through West Virginia's forests, Civil War veteran Charles McIlvaine had an idea that would either kill him or revolutionize American cooking – he decided to start eating wild mushrooms. His resulting book, One Thousand American Fungi reads like a mycological memoir meets survival guide.
"For twenty years my little friends — the toadstools — have been my constant companions," McIlvaine writes in his preface. "They have interested me, delighted me, fed me." His passion for fungi led him to personally test hundreds of species, despite occasionally suffering "unpleasant results" from the poisonous ones. McIlvaine literally risked death by toadstool to expand America's culinary horizons.
His scientific curiosity extended to the Psilocybe family of mushrooms. He wrote:
Of it, alone, the writer has had opportunity to eat meals. Several others of the species have been found by him and tested in small quantity. They are all of good texture, substance and flavor, though most are small. He is of the opinion that increased testing will prove the entire genus edible. Nothing can or should be prognosticated about a toadstool, but the indications are all in favor of Psilocybe… The plant is tender, cooks easily and is of fine flavor.
McIlvaine's 800+ page book is just one gem among millions in HathiTrust, a massive digital library that lets you freely browse over 18 million scanned books. Want to explore Victorian ghost stories, leaf through 1850s cookbooks, or discover long-forgotten travel guides? It's all there, minus the dust allergies of traditional rare book rooms.
What makes this digital treasure trove special isn't just its size — it's the wonderfully weird stuff you can find. While commercial e-book services focus on bestsellers and recent releases, HathiTrust specializes in digitized versions of physical books from university libraries worldwide. Want to learn card tricks from a 1910 magician's magazine? Interested in an 1890 account of the Haymarket Massacre? Curious about long-forgotten folk remedies? It's all there, complete with original illustrations and typography.
"We offer reading access to the fullest extent allowable by U.S. copyright law," explains HathiTrust's welcome page. The scans are high-quality, preserving every detail of these historical documents—from ornate chapter headings to handwritten margin notes left by readers from centuries past. While the search system occasionally struggles with old-fashioned fonts (pro tip: try multiple spellings if you're hunting for something specific), the ability to flip through these digital pages offers an addictive portal to the past.
Unlike some clunky digital archives, HathiTrust makes browsing easy. Multiple copies of the same book are often available, so if one scan is hard to read, you can usually find a clearer version. And while you might miss the musty smell of old bookshops, having 18 million books available at 3 AM in your pajamas has its own kind of magic. As their mission statement puts it, they're "contributing to the common good by sharing the record of human knowledge" — one weird old book at a time.