I really enjoyed this book. I'm a sucker for history of really specific things and this fit that genre for me. I particularly liked the underground exploring part with the old subway stations and secret tunnels. It felt like a real life treasure hunt.

The cover copy promises sewers and caves and abandoned subway stations, which intrigued me, but I had no clue how absolutely fascinating the rest of this book was going to be. Did you know that there are miners in the present day that sacrifice llamas to statues for protection? Or that there was a photographer taking pictures of the catacombs and sewers under Paris in the 1860s? The author talks about lots of fascinating places and their history, but he also spends a lot of time exploring the relationship that people have with the dark spaces underground. I finished this book with a list of things I want to explore further, even through the author provided lots of information and photos. It's a great vicarious trip to places I'd never be able to visit in real life.

Wide Ranging and Engagingly Idiosyncratic

I'm a sucker for underground adventure and tales of urban decay explorers. But, after traveling through the third abandoned subway tunnel and the fourth sewer system I've usually had enough for a while. In this book we start with the New York Subway and then the sewers of Paris, and so I thought this would just be another book, albeit exceptionally well written, about avoiding rats in the stinky dark. Well, excuuuuse me for being such a snot. Once we leave Paris, (although we'll always have Paris), we move on to a vast selection of odd, engaging, intriguing, and downright fascinating underground places.

The blurbs promise "a narrative spanning continents and epochs", and that's exactly what you get. This is a wide, deep and fascinating collection of underground adventures. But there are two points of emphasis. First, instead of just a travelogue or an adventure journal we get all sorts of musings, digressions, factoids, related tales, and insights that go well beyond the immediate trek being described. This makes the book much richer and more diverting than you might expect. Second, and I apologize if this sounds smarmy, we don't get too much Will Hunt. No divorce, mommy issues, depression, angst, or on the fly therapy. Hunt is an engaging and congenial partner and guide who avoids babble.

So, this was an entertaining and eye opening find for those with a taste for armchair adventure or the things that go bump in the dark. An excellent find.

(Please note that I received a free ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

I absolutely loved this book, and couldn't put it down! Tunnels, caves, the Subway, it is all fascinating. Love his style of writing! Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this WONDERFUL book!!

This book sounded so interesting when I was combing through the various offerings! And I was not disappointed! It was a terrific surprise actually just how good it was. Definitely recommend. It was something of a wild ride. The author is a gifted writer to be sure. Learned a lot but mainly enjoyed the journey!

Part adventure-travelogue, part philosophy. I have a fascination with all things underground, even if I’m afraid of the creatures I might find there. Hunt uses his own explorations as a jumping off point for a wide-ranging look at the myths, legends, and history of humankind’s relationship with the underground.

I will return to this book time and time again! I cannot recommend it enough! So grateful I got to read and review this book!

A marvelous travel to the underground world using exquisite descriptions with dark hits.

#Underground #NetGalley

Normally when you hear a person describing a book they can’t put down, they’re referring to fiction. Not this time! Hunt, an urban explorer since childhood takes readers underneath our cities and towns around the world to explore worlds both mundane and beautiful. Tunnels, catacombs, the ruins of cities mankind has built on top of, are explored and explained with Hunt’s infectious enthusiasm. Well researched and written with the utter joy of a man who loves what he does, this book will enthrall, entertain and perhaps encourage others to examine the world beneath their feet

Will Hunt writes about being underground so well that I actually experienced a touch of claustrophobia reading this book. It's a terrific read: one very individual lifelong interest in what lies beneath our cities, fields, farms, mountains, and deserts. Hunt goes caving and lives with the dark in numerous places and with complete respect for the cultures into whose caves he ventures.I loved learning about how cave spirits are universal, that the worship of cave deities is common, that caves have preserved far more art and archaeological information than just cave paintings. My only complaint is that the photos desperately need captions. In the Kindle version I read, none of the photos were captioned, so I often wasn't sure what I was looking at. Add those in, and you've got a book everyone who has ever wondered about what's under their feet will love.

This book is somewhat interesting, but it left me wanting more. Rather than a history of underground structures beneath cities (although there is some of that), it's more of a travelogue, describing the author's experience as he tours underground various cities.

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.

Underground delves into a subject that most of us never think about. What is going on underground? This book explores that question in fascinating ways. Subways, tunnels, and many places we know nothing about. People live and die underground. It is its own culture. I recommend this book for everyone. It's a good idea to know what is going on underground. Thanks to NetGalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

a fascinating book about the world under our feet, the author explores the subterranean world in a interesting and well researched book

Underground is a fascinating look at the various places people live and spend time below the Earth's surface. I particularly enjoyed reading about the various subway stations and other locales.

"Underground" is the author's musings about mankind's relationship with underground spaces. The author explained how he got interested in underground spaces. He told about a few of his adventures underground, but he mainly focused on how mankind has related to underground spaces throughout history, usually in religious ways. He related everything to the evolutionary past, from explaining the idea that life may have first come about underground to how evolution has made humans ill-equipped to process underground spaces.

The author talked about how myths often assign scary religious places to the underground realm, how mining men often appeased underworld deities in hopes of preserving their lives, and the Maya cave cult. He talked about underground cities and bunkers, underground graffiti and cave art, and how it was difficult for people to map underground areas. He also talked about people getting lost underground or studying sensory deprivation and sleep cycles in caves. This book might be most interesting to people like the author who are especially drawn by underground spaces.

Falls short in content

There is so much below us - subways, water pipes, sewage, electrical wires, etc - that have helped create the society we know. Yet the book focuses on the role of the underground in folklore and religion, which was I found only somewhat interesting. The book was also memoir, but this part was also bland. Memoirs can be worked well into stories like this, for example “The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs,” by Steve Brusatte or “Built on Bones,” by Brenna Hassett.

I requested this book thinking it would be about something entirely different and was pleasantly surprised by what i found. This book travels (literally) into many different types of underground and goes into the historical, religious, and artistic aspects of each. Very engaging writing style and well edited, i thought this book was wonderful.

I received a free review copy odd this book in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.