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Underland

Written by: Robert Macfarlane
Narrated by: Matthew Waterson
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Publisher's Summary

Hailed as "the great nature writer of this generation" (Wall Street Journal), Robert Macfarlane is the celebrated author of books about the intersections of the human and the natural realms. In Underland, he delivers his masterpiece: an epic exploration of the Earth's underworlds as they exist in myth, literature, memory, and the land itself. 

In this highly anticipated sequel to The Old Ways, Macfarlane 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."

©2019 Robert Macfarlane (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

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A fascinating eye-opener

Robert McFarlane writes beautifully about adventures that I would not dare to undertake, but love to read about. I was flabbergasted to hear about the origins of the catacombs under Paris, the extent of worldwide underground human activity, and the daring of this intelligent author.

The actor chosen to read the audible version of this book has a lovely voice which is clear and easy to listen to, but he is uninformed in a number of significant areas of knowledge relating to the text. He mispronounces place names, basic scientific words, etc. It is no barrier to understanding the text as long as the listener is already familiar with the word. In fact, while slightly shocking, it could be unintentionally amusing.
This is a fascinating and well-written book.

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