Underground: A Human History of the Worlds Beneath Our Feet

Lets start with the positives. The authors passion for the underground worlds shines through on every page and this helps to make the book an easy read. It is well written but loses its way part way through as it swiftly shifts from the urban environment and the physical interactions to the physiological and religious elements. These latter areas were just as interesting, but the sudden divide made the book feel disjointed. It perhaps would have been better for the author to cover some more urban areas, such as London or Naples, in some more detail whilst including the spiritual interwoven through this throughout the book rather than just the first half.The book is a personal history/journey for the author and he includes many pictures he took himself but there are no descriptions or labels for these pictures unless you skip to the very last page of the book and find some quick notes that seem like a rough first draft. Criticisms aside, the book is diverse, interesting and frustrating in equal measures.

Hunt's ambitiously subtitled 'human history of the worlds beneath our feet' weaves together numerous aspects of underground activity, related to shelter, biology, mining, psychology, rituals, urbex, among others. Nevertheless, this is first and foremost a collection of personal explorations below the surface, tied together in topical chapters. • Its initially highly engaging narrative discusses such diverse subjects as Paris’ catacombs, early photography, dark corners of NYC’s subway system, and scientific research for ancient underground life. • Regrettably, somewhere past the halfway point, this book increasingly veers towards mysticism, while getting firmly stuck on links to religious worship. • The black and white illustrations are let down by shoddy end credits, poor reproduction, and limited size. Furthermore, the publisher's choice of large font and line spacing feels like an attempt at bulking up the book from what should have been less than 180 pages to over 270. • Overall this is still a fairly good, if uneven, read mixing a personal recce ‘diary’ with an attempt at linking all of human history to the underground. [originally reviewed on Facebook/MaltaUnderground]

Videos by the same author are also worth a look.

Beneath my feet lies a 300 million-year-old petrified rainforest– the second largest in the world. Pictures of it can be seen here. It’s incredible to imagine that this snowy countryside was once a tropical rainforest and that its remains are now buried deep below where I stand today. Scientific proof of what once was. Do you ever wonder about what used to be? Do you wonder about what can’t be seen.Will Hunt’s curiosity about the unknown began the summer he turned 16, when he discovered an abandoned train tunnel that ran under his neighborhood. It was this experience that eventually launched his passion for urban exploring- a hobby that allowed him to travel all over the world as he sought out abandoned subway platforms (ghost stations), dodged police officers in foreign countries, and encountered “Mole People”. While in the Catacombs of Paris, he even came across an underground library, La Librairie, where urban explorers left books for others to borrow. Oh, my soul!I saw that we- all of us, the human species- have always felt a quiet pull from the underground, that we are connected to this realm as we are to our own shadow.I must say my favorite bit may have been the story about the “Mole Man of Hackney” who decided to dig a wine cellar in his basement and never stopped. He kept burrowing until his home started to collapse. In his words, “I just have a big basement.”Underground by Will Hunt was fascinating and really well done! If you are a fan of traveling from your couch or, like me, are simply saving your cabbage and working all the side hustles so you can travel in real life, this is the book for you! Hearing about his expeditions energized my sense of adventure and learning the science of the “worlds beneath our feet” caused me to look at things from a whole new perspective. Microbiologists keep finding life deeper and deeper inside the earth and are even discovering pockets of water that are more than a billion years old. In addition, it’s estimated that more than half of the world’s caves are undiscovered! We explore outer space, but there is so much to find here- our oceans and underground landscapes are just as much a mystery.

Overall this was an interesting and though provoking book. The challenge I had with this book is that I wasn’t sure what to expect. Based on the cover text, I was expecting a discussion of the history with humans’ relationship to the dark unground spaces, with tendrils to mythology, history and science. In the end, there was that, albeit woven into a travel journal, where the mix of journal and background that varies throughout. I found the first chapter a bit slow going, but the book seemed to flow better for me as I progressed.The history, science and mythology are woven into stories of the authors travels to obscure and not so obscure places, and the personal touch emphasized the connection that these places have to humans, so in the end the person story made for a more engaging read for me when it was in the right balance.The book has un-captioned photos scattered through out it, which added to a sense of discovery, but at times I wished they were captioned so that I could quickly find out what they were. I was a bit more frustrated that the end notes only sometimes explained the photo rather than simply being a photo credit.The issues I had with the book are mostly matters of personal preference though. Overall, this is an interesting read; you do need to start it with the right expectations (or even none) for the best experience. While the book was not as compelling as I had hoped, but was a great way to contemplate what the underground means to us, and to the extent it got me thinking philosophically about the contradictions inherent in our obsession with the underground, it was worth the effort for me.

Thought I was buying a book that would discuss underground spaces. What I read was so much more! Expertly written with an easy flow of information. I highly recommend reading this book. I am recommending it to ALL my friends.

Almost no actual science, this is mostly stories about this place or those people the author has seen or met. There's lots of mythology and legend and not much in the way of research. Many descriptions of crawling through mud, wandering around lost, or musing at unusual spaces. This would be a good book to read to smart children, but I need something meatier.