Underland

A Deep Time Journey

By: Robert Macfarlane

Narrated by: Matthew Waterson

Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins

Publisher's summary

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 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."

©2019 Robert Macfarlane (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Meditative and Fascinating

There is a lot in this book. While it covers a wide range of topics built loosely around its central theme, there is a powerful center, the idea of impermanence and what we are to leave behind. I found this book to be incredibly fascinating. One of the best I've listened to this year.

I have a feeling I will be revisiting this very soon

Truly one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read. I loved it so much, I bought the hard copy so I could hold it in my hands & keep it near.
Thank you, Robert.

Gripping and important read.

McFarland engages his readers with astonishing descriptions and insight. He takes us with him into the under land.

Lyric and Thought Provoking

A climber talks of what lies beneath. This is not a geology book, but rather a book about us.

Tiring

So, generally speaking, this is a good book, and well-read.

However, I don’t know about you, but at times, I do get tired by yet another highly intelligent writer discovering things and flooding us with his creative awe-demanding findings and conclusions.

Maybe we should all just inspire our own awe just a bit more?

Stunningly beautiful

Take yourself on this journey. You will not regret it. And ,it will change your dreams for the better.

excellent

Fascinating information about topics I've never thought about!!! Makes you think at the same time it entertains you.

Meandering

This book had snippets of great writing that felt poorly stitched together. I often got lost as to where he was only to realize the book had gone off on another unrelated tanget. The narrator did a great job and kept me engaged enough to finish. Overall it was ok. Not bad not great.

Awe, gratitude, and grief

This Deep Time Journey is not only into the depths of the Earth but also into the depths of human history and the human unconscious.

Madfarlane conveys the glorious beauty in which we evolved while acknowledging the deep grief caused by anthropocentric destruction of a beautiful and perfect living organism (our planet). Somehow the listener is able to feel awe and gratitude for this amazing earth, grieve the results of human actions -- and yet still avoid despair due to the deep time perspective. And his writing is alive and flowing.

The last two chapters were my favorite -- Greenland and Finland, perhaps because they were the most meaningful. I felt myself present in those places when listening. Even though I know I will never see them with my physical eyes, I was able to see them in his writing. I was less moved by the daredevil urban explorers or anarchic catacomb explorers or life-risking cavers -- there was overmuch ego there. But those stories were still interesting.

The narrator has a voice which is very pleasant but he really, really needs to learn to pause for a second or two between paragraphs, the flow is just not quite right.

magnetically subterranean

A new appreciation of the Earth and it's dangerous charms it's hypnotizing power. What is beneath the garden?