Underland : a deep time journey / Robert Macfarlane.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Macfarlane, Robert, 1976- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Civilization, Subterranean.

Underground areas--History.

Underground areas.

Voyages and travels.

Geology.

History.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

viii, 488 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : W.W. Norton & Company, 2020.

Summary:

"In Underland, Macfarlane delivers his masterpiece: an epic exploration of the Earth's underworlds as they exist in myth, literature, memory, and the land itself. He takes us on an extraordinary journey into our relationship with darkness, burial, and what lies beneath the surface of both place and mind. Traveling through "deep time"--The dizzying expanses of geologic time that stretch away from the present--he moves from the birth of the universe to a post-human future, from the prehistoric art of Norwegian sea caves to the blue depths of the Greenland ice cap, from Bronze Age funeral chambers to the catacomb labyrinth below Paris, and from the underground fungal networks through which trees communicate to a deep-sunk "hiding place" where nuclear waste will be stored for 100,000 years to come. Woven through Macfarlane's own travels are the unforgettable stories of descents into the underland made across history by explorers, artists, cavers, divers, mourners, dreamers, and murderers, all of whom have been drawn for different reasons to seek what Cormac McCarthy calls "the awful darkness within the world." Global in its geography and written with great lyricism and power, Underland speaks powerfully to our present moment. At once ancient and urgent, this is a book that will change the way you see the world." -- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

First chamber ; Descending

Seeing (Britain). Burial (Mendips, Somerset) ; Dark matter (Boulby, Yorkshire)

The understorey (Epping Forest, London)

Second chamber

Hiding (Europe). Invisible cities (Paris)

Starless rivers (The Carso, Italy)

Hollow land (Slovenian highlands)

Third chamber

Haunting (The north). Red dancers (Lofotens, Norway)

The edge (Andøya, Norway)

The blue of time (Kulusuk, Greenland)

Meltwater (Knud Rasmussen Glacier, Greenland)

The hiding place (Olkiluoto, Finland)

Surfacing.

Notes:

"First published as a Norton paperback 2020"--Title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 427-464) and index.

ISBN:

9780393358094

0393358097

OCLC:

1144124343