100 books like Underground

This book was pivotal in sparking my fascination for the secretive and mysterious worlds beneath cities. 

It is the definitive guide to the vast assemblage of underground spaces, infrastructures, and nooks and crannies beneath the streets of London.

The coverage of the book is remarkable and will really help readers that are new to the theme to appreciate the huge range of spaces and infrastructures that lurk hidden far beneath London’s streets.

The book opened my eyes to culverted and hidden rivers; to sewers, water, and hydraulic pipes and tunnels under the Thames; and to underground transport systems, hidden power and communications grids, and labyrinths of bunkers.

Most important for me were the book’s amazing array of maps, lithographs, and photographs. 

A nonfiction book in rhyme for the very young, Roadwork does double duty as a fun read-aloud with plenty of Onomatopoeia (Bump! Whump! Whop!) and an educational book about the road building process. The book takes readers all the way from planning the road and marking it on the map to planting trees, installing signs, and celebrating a job well done. (Toot! Honk! Vroom!) Kids will love the colorful illustrations–especially all the trucks–and even parents might learn a thing or two about how we build our roads. A page of “Machine Facts” towards the back of the book describes each truck or tractor seen throughout the book and gives a quick explanation of what the machines do.

This was one of my favorite books of 2021. First published in South Korea (where it was a bestseller), I Am the Subway takes readers on a subway ride through Seoul, narrated by the subway itself. “I rattle and clatter over the tracks. Same time, same route every day. Carrying people from one place to another….” We see the passengers get on and off the subway. We hear the subway sounds–ba-dum, ba-dum– and we catch an intimate glimpse into the lives of the people who step on board. I Am a Subway is an unexpectedly beautiful meditation on the many people we cross paths with each day as we make our way through the city. 

What I love about this book is that instead of focusing on the engineers, architects, artists, and other high-profile designers who tend to get the credit for creating so much of what we see in our cities–it focuses on the laborers who take their plans and make them a reality. Someone Builds the Dream will get kids (and their parents) thinking more about the building process and the people who spend their days putting together the parts of the many buildings, bridges, fountains, and other structures that come together to create a city. Young children will love the rhyming text and older ones will find much to wonder about as they scan the vibrant illustrations.

No one plans a school field trip like Miss Frizzle! In The Magic School Bus at the Waterworks, her students ride their amazing, magical bus to a cloud in the sky, where they experience the path of a drop of water, first as rain, then through a purification system, then through underground pipes all the way back to the school bathroom. There’s a lot more that happens along the way and the illustrations are really helpful at showing this complex process. It’s fun and it’s educational. A win for both parents and kids!

Another fantastic evocation of the vast and complex subterranean world of cities, this time, the focus is on New York.

When I first read this I was immediately transfixed by its cover: A giant hand, holding the Empire State Building and pulling up a huge, dusty, and steaming clump of Manhattan’s underground world – replete with all manner of tunnels, subway trains, wires, pipes, and water mains – in the manner of someone pulling up a tree to expose the roots below.

Whilst obviously dated, the book’s superb prose and fabulous maps and images really take the reader into the vast worlds burrowed over centuries with enormous dedication beneath New York’s bedrock which, in contrast to London’s clay and alluvium, is made mostly of incredibly hard igneous schist.

The subterranean worlds of cities have long been represented as a literal ‘underworld’ – a hidden and shadowy realm inhabited by all sorts of marginalised and spectral figures and communities.

Very often, such communities – real, imagined, and mythical – have been deemed by elites to be morally, socially, and biologically threatening the above-surface city. As someone who does not generally read a huge amount of fiction, Heise’s wonderful book was a huge inspiration for me.

It explores and reveals like no other book how American urban underworlds have been represented across a range of American literature.

From New York through Chicago and Los Angeles, what emerges is a rich a vibrant history through which the lived and imagined world below cities have been pivotal in key novels.

Anyone who has ventured down into Paris’s many catacombs, tunnels, and quarries will quickly realise that no city has a more storied, evocative, and influential subterranean culture.

With stunning colour photography, amazing maps, and an unrivalled discussion of the remarkable histories, cultures, and physical realms beneath Paris, this book was a revelation to me. 

What I found particularly fascinating is the way the book shows that, in sharp contrast to above-surface Paris, which is constantly ‘regenerated’, repaired, and cleared of the detritus of the past – beyond immaculately repaired historic buildings – the ‘stuff’ of Paris subterranean world  largely just continues to accumulate!

The photos in this remarkable book take readers on tours of underground signs from the days of Victor Hugo; sketches of the guillotine from the time of the Revolution; Nazi military signs, and a vast array of art, graffiti, and remnants from Paris’ remarkable present-day ‘catophile’ culture.

I cannot stop loving this book, which graphically depicts a city growing up around a small farm country cottage. While the storyline concerns the fate of the tiny house, the thrill is watching the steady mushrooming growth of vehicles, electric lines, street cars, street lamps, apartment buildings, elevated and subway trains, and finally skyscrapers as they surround the home before it is able to make its satisfying escape back to the country. The art is warm and cozy, befitting a book that has a gutsy cottage as the main character.

I recommend this book because, to me, it is unique–I’ve never read a book like it. It’s an interesting plot, end-of-the-world stuff, with some very unlikeable, low-life characters. It’s set in a very dark version of London that I know and love, in a pub environment similar to the one that I grew up in.

There is murder on the cards throughout the story, but the author still manages to squeeze in some humor. It’s just a different style of writing that I think people should give a try.