Arora, David. Mushrooms Demystified.

Its strengths are that it is fun to read, it is comprehensive, and it has a lot of great photos.

Its weakness for Northeastern users is that its focus is on western North America.

Bessette, Alan & Arleen, and David Fischer. Mushrooms of Northeastern North America.

Its strengths are that its focus is on Northeastern North America, and it includes lots of mushrooms, including many not in other guides.

Its weaknesses are that its arrangement is alphabetical by genus, that many of these genera are not readily recognized in the field, and that its photos, while many, are too small.

Lincoff, Gary. The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms.

Its strengths are that its focus is primarily on Northeastern North America, that it is comprehensive, and that it has at least one photo for each of  700+ entries.

Its weaknesses are that the photos are separate from the text and that the names on the photos are common names, rather than scientific names.

Mushroom books are always available in bookstores, in libraries, and on Internet sites, such as Amazon.com. One of the problems with these books, however, is that even the best of them go out of print. But many out of print books can be found at used book stores and by Internet book searches.
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Example 1: You have a white-spored gilled mushroom with a central stem.
Use the Key to gilled mushrooms, go to White-spored gilled mushrooms.
Go to 1. This tells you to go to 2.
Do you have a ring? If No, go to 5.
Run your finger nail across a few gills. If they ooze a milklike latex, go to 6 and continue with LACTARIUS.

Example 2: You have a black-spored gilled mushroom:
Use the Key to gilled mushrooms, go to Purple-brown to black-spored gilled mushrooms.
Go to 1. This tells you to go to 4.
Does the cap deliquesce, i.e., liquify into black ink? Try it: put in into a sieve put over a bowl and wait a few hours. If it deliquesces, the sieve will be empty and the bowl will have black ink, in which case you know your mushroom is a Coprinus.
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How to make a spore print:
Use white paper only, such as a 3 x 5" notecard; a white spore print is easily seen as a white pattern on a white background. Cut off the stem and put the mature mushroom or a section of it, gills or pores down, on a piece of paper or index card. Or make a hole into the paper, large enough for the stem, poke the stem through the hole, and put the card on top of a glass or other container tall enough to hold the stem, and to hold the paper with the mushroom lying flat on the paper. Do not disturb for a few hours. Then lift the mushroom carefully and see the spores it left.
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Poisonous Mushrooms in Northeastern North America and Look-alikes
If you are interested in edible mushrooms, you should study these first of all!

A complete listing: Kingdom, Division (Phylum), Subdivision, Class, Order, Family, Tribe, Genus, Section, Species, Sub-species, Variety, Form.
Mnemonic: King David Came Over From Germany Saturday.

A Little Latin Lesson: genus is singular, genera is plural; species is both singular and plural.
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