Underground by Will Hunt

Underground by Will Hunt ISBN-13: 9780812996746 Hardback: 288 pages Publisher: Spiegel & Grau Released: Jan. 29, 2019

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, Modified from Goodreads:
An exploration of our relationship with the worlds beneath our feet. Will Hunt is an urban adventurer who has explored caves and catacombs, subway systems, ghostly mines, and all varieties of holes in the ground. He's tracked down people who, for one reason or another, have shared his underground fixation. Hunt explores Paris underground, the famous network of underground dwellings in Turkey, and the hallowed caves of the Australian outback; he descends eight thousand feet into abandoned mines in South Dakota with NASA scientists and experiments with time alone in absolute darkness. This is a thought-provoking excursion into both the deepest recesses of the earth and the primal longings of the human psyche.


My Review:
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.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.