Shiitake Shiitake The shiitake (; Lentinula edodes) is an edible mushroom native to East Asia, which is cultivated and consumed in many Asian countries. It is considered a medicinal mushroom in some forms of traditional medicine. The fungus was first described scientifically as "Agaricus edodes" by Miles Joseph Berkeley in 1877. It was placed in the genus "Lentinula" by David Pegler in 1976. The fungus has acquired an extensive synonymy in its taxonomic history: The mushroom's Japanese name is composed of , for the tree "Castanopsis cuspidata" that provides the dead logs on which it is typically cultivated, and . The
The World Is What It Is in 1996. The biography has been extensively reviewed: the reviewers include Paul Theroux, who wrote an earlier book about Naipaul. The biography was selected by the editors of the "New York Times Book Review" as one of the "Times"' "10 Best Books of 2008". It won the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography, and the British literary award the Hawthornden Prize. The World Is What It Is The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul is a biography of the Nobel Prize-winning author V. S. Naipaul by Patrick French. It was published in