Description:
The underground has been a dominant image of modern life since the late eighteenth century. A site of crisis, fascination, and hidden truth, the underground is a space at once more immediate and more threatening than the ordinary world above. In...
Brief description: David L. Pike is Professor of Literature at American University. He is the author of Subterranean Cities: The World beneath Paris and London, 1800-1945 and Passage through Hell: Modernist Descents, Medieval Underworlds (winner of the Gustave O. Arlt Award in the Humanities), both from Cornell.
Review Quotes:
A triumph. The book is encyclopaedic in scope, never less than an absolute pleasure to read, and boasts a generous selection from the rich field of images related to the topic. The book will prove invaluable to anyone with an interest in the manifold topics it brings together, and is surely set to become a landmark in the history of urban modernity.
--David Ashford "Modernism/modernity"