Underland: A Deep Time Journey

An Amazon Best Book of June 2019: Heads-up to your inner Gilgamesh: "The way into the underland is through the riven trunk of an old ash tree." Starting with that sentence, Robert Macfarlane begins an exploration of the world beneath our feet. Where his earlier book The Old Ways explored landscape and its effects on human experience, Underland dives into catacombs, caves, nuclear waste facilities, and the land beneath Greenland's shrinking ice cap to delve into the darker recesses of our imaginations, a place where artists, adventurers, and criminals have traveled, willingly and otherwise. Expanding his journey into the realm of "deep time"—a parallel expanse of past and future almost unimaginable to human intellect, but also irresistible to contemplate—Macfarlane takes us from the moment of creation into a post-human future, one that might be better off without us. Add its stunning jacket by Stanley Donwood (who creates Radiohead album covers in his spare hours), Underland is a one-of-a-kind book, deeply thoughtful, richly written, and infinitely rewarding. —Jon Foro, Amazon Book Review