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The pages show normal wear. There is a signature or handwriting on the side of book. This is an ex library book, stickers and markings accordingly. Fast shipping and order satisfaction guaranteed. A portion of your purchase benefits Non-Profit Organizations, First Aid and Fire Stations! The pages show normal wear. There is a signature or handwriting on the side of book. This is an ex library book, stickers and markings accordingly. Fast shipping and order satisfaction guaranteed. A portion of your purchase benefits Non-Profit Organizations, First Aid and Fire Stations! See less

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Robert Macfarlane

Underland: A Deep Time Journey

by Robert Macfarlane (Author) Format: Hardcover

(3,143)

Editors' pick Best Books of the Year 2019

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National Bestseller • New York Times “100 Notable Books of the Year” • NPR “Favorite Books of 2019” • Guardian “100 Best Books of the 21st Century” • Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award

From the best-selling, award-winning author of Landmarks and The Old Ways, a haunting voyage into the planet’s past and future.

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 his international bestseller 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.”

Global in its geography and written with great lyricism and power, Underland speaks powerfully to our present moment. Taking a deep-time view of our planet, Macfarlane here asks a vital and unsettling question: “Are we being good ancestors to the future Earth?” Underland marks a new turn in Macfarlane’s long-term mapping of the relations of landscape and the human heart. From its remarkable opening pages to its deeply moving conclusion, it is a journey into wonder, loss, fear, and hope. At once ancient and urgent, this is a book that will change the way you see the world.

24 illustrations

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Print length

496 pages
Language

English
Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company
Publication date

June 4, 2019
Dimensions

6.4 x 1.3 x 9.6 inches
ISBN-10

0393242145
ISBN-13

978-0393242140

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Is a River Alive?
Robert Macfarlane

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The Book of Birds: A Field Guide to Wonder and Loss
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From the Publisher

Underland - Robert Macfarlane - Best Book of the Year 2019

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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

Review

"Mesmerizing…Underland is a portal of light in dark times."
― Terry Tempest Williams, New York Times Book Review

"An excellent book―fearless and subtle, empathic and strange."
― Dwight Garner, The New York Times

"Reading Macfarlane connects us to dazzling new worlds. It's a connection that brings, more than anything else, joy."
― Barbara J. King, NPR

"Incantatory…A worthy companion to the historian Simon Schama’s monumental Landscape and Memory."
― Marcia Bjornerud, Wall Street Journal

"Brilliant."
― Peter Fish, San Francisco Chronicle

"Exquisite. "
― Ryan J. Haupt, Science

"Quietly prophetic. "
― Jedediah Purdy, Atlantic

"Profound in every sense of the word."
― Richard Powers

"Underland is a devastating act of witness and a clear, cogent, lyrical examination of the darknesses invisible beneath our feet."
― Lauren Groff

"Underland is a profound reckoning with humankind’s self-imperiled position in nature’s eternal order. At once thrilling and soulful, raw and erudite, it is a book of revelations."
― Philip Gourevitch

Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company
Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 4, 2019
Edition ‏ : ‎ Illustrated
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 496 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0393242145
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393242140
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.4 x 1.3 x 9.6 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #333,994 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #13 in Geology (Books)
- #58 in Environmentalism
- #80 in Nature Conservation
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(3,143)

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Robert Macfarlane

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Robert Macfarlane is the author of prize-winning and bestselling books about landscape, nature, people and place, including Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination (2003), The Wild Places (2007), The Old Ways (2012), Holloway (2013, with Stanley Donwood and Dan Richards), Landmarks (2015), The Lost Words: A Spell Book (with the artist Jackie Morris, 2017) and Underland: A Deep Time Journey (2019). His work has been translated into many languages, won prizes around the world, and his books have been widely adapted for film, television, stage and radio. He has collaborated with artists, film-makers, actors, photographers and musicians, including Hauschka, Willem Dafoe, Karine Polwart and Stanley Donwood. In 2017 he was awarded the EM Forster Prize for Literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

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