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.

Winner of the 2020 National Outdoor Book Award for Best History/Biography A saga of survival, technological innovation, and breathtaking human physical achievement -- all set against the backdrop of a world headed toward war -- that became one of the most compelling international dramas of the 20th century. As tension steadily rose between European powers in the 1930s, a different kind of battle was already raging across the Himalayas. Teams of mountaineers from Great Britain, Nazi Germany, and the United States were all competing to be the first to climb the world's highest peaks, including Mount Everest and K2. Unlike climbers today, they had few photographs or maps, no properly working oxygen systems, and they wore leather boots and cotton parkas. Amazingly, and against all odds, they soon went farther and higher than anyone could have imagined. And as they did, their story caught the world's attention. The climbers were mobbed at train stations, and were featured in movies and plays. James Hilton created the mythical land of Shangri-La in Lost Horizon, while an English eccentric named Maurice Wilson set out for Tibet in order to climb Mount Everest alone. And in the darkened corridors of the Third Reich, officials soon discovered the propaganda value of planting a Nazi flag on top of the world's highest mountains Set in London, New York, Germany, and in India, China, and Tibet, The World Beneath Their Feet is a story not only of climbing and mountain climbers, but also of passion and ambition, courage and folly, tradition and innovation, tragedy and triumph. Scott Ellsworth tells a rollicking, real-life adventure story that moves seamlessly from the streets of Manhattan to the footlights of the West End, deadly avalanches on Nanga Parbat, rioting in the Kashmir, and the wild mountain dreams of a New Zealand beekeeper named Edmund Hillary and a young Sherpa runaway called Tenzing Norgay. Climbing the Himalayas was the Greatest Generation's moonshot-one that was clouded by the onset of war and then, incredibly, fully accomplished. A gritty, fascinating history that promises to enrapture fans of Hampton Sides, Erik Larson, Jon Krakauer, and Laura Hillenbrand, The World Beneath Their Feet brings this forgotten story back to life.

Descend -- Across Paris -- The intraterrestrials -- The ochre miners -- The burrowers -- Lost -- The hidden bison -- The dark zone -- Humberto.

In 1943, Private Clay Paxton trains hard with the US Army Rangers at Camp Forrest, Tennessee, determined to do his best in the upcoming Allied invasion of France. With his future stolen by his brothers' betrayal, Clay has only one thing to live for--fulfilling the recurring dream of his death. Leah Jones works as a librarian at Camp Forrest, longing to rise above her orphanage upbringing and belong to the community, even as she uses her spare time to search for her real family--the baby sisters she was separated from so long ago. After Clay saves Leah's life from a brutal attack, he saves her virtue with a marriage of convenience. When he ships out to train in England for D-day, their letters bind them together over the distance. But can a love strong enough to overcome death grow between them before Clay's recurring dream comes true?

At the height of South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle, a boy must face life decisions that test what he believes—and call for no turning back. South Africa, 1976. Joshua lives with his mother in the maid’s room, in the backyard of their wealthy white employers’ house in the city by the sea. He doesn’t quite understand the events going on around him. But when he rescues a stranger and riots begin to sweep the country, Joshua has to face the world beneath—the world deep inside him—to make heartbreaking choices that will change his life forever. Genuine and quietly unflinching, this beautifully nuanced novel from a veteran journalist captures a child’s-eye view of the struggle that shaped a nation and riveted the world.

A beautifully illustrated look at the forces that help cities grow—and eventually cause their destruction—told through the stories of the great civilizations of ancient America. You may think you know all of the American cities. But did you know that long before New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, or Boston ever appeared on the map—thousands of years before Europeans first colonized North America—other cities were here? They grew up, fourished, and eventually disappeared in the same places that modern cities like St. Louis and Mexico City would later appear. In the pages of this book, you'll find the astonishing story of how they grew from small settlements to booming city centers—and then crumbled into ruins.

Meet the world's most fascinating sea creatures—see the lives and curiosities of colorful fish and coral reefs—this spectacular volume has more than 300 color photos and extraordinary text from a leading marine biologist and underwater photographer, and the international expert on seahorses. In this richly informative volume, brimming with new discoveries and more than three hundred colorful images of jaw-dropping fish and coral reefs, you'll swim in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans; you'll be dazzled in the Coral Triangle and amazed in Triton Bay. Up close you'll meet the Cenderawasih fairy wrasse, with its florescent yellow streak; the polka-dot longnose filefish; and the multicolored seadragon. There are scarlet-colored corals, baby-blue sponges, daffodil crinoids, and all sorts of mystifying creatures that change color at the drop of a hat. The whale shark is almost larger than life and the author's beloved pygmy seahorse, unless photographed, is almost too tiny to see. The wondrous creatures inside are charmers and tricksters and excel in the arts of seduction and deception, and you'll have the rare chance to see and delight in their antics. You'll also learn what they eat, how they play, and how they care for one another, live on one another, and mimic others when they're afraid. There is also compelling insight into the naming process, which sea creatures are facing extinction, and how we can help them before it's too late.