Robert Macfarlane

In UNDERLAND, Macfarland 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...

"In this exquisitely written book, Robert Macfarlane sets off from his Cambridge, England, home to follow the ancient tracks, holloways, drove roads, and sea paths that crisscross both the British landscape and its waters and territories beyond. The result is an immersive, enthralling exploration of the ghosts and voices that haunt old paths, of the stories our tracks keep and tell, and of pilgrimage and ritual. Told in Macfarlane's distinctive voice,...

"The story starts with William Smith's early years, from apprentice to surveyor for hire, and from publication of his groundbreaking 1815 geological strata map to imprisonment for debt. Smith's 1799 geological map of Bath and table of strata, his first strata map of England and Wales, published in 1801, and photographs of some of Smith's collection of 2,000 fossils illustrate the tale. The remainder of the book is organized into four parts, each beginning...