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Metropolis on the Styx: The Underworlds of Modern Urban Culture, 1800-2001. By David L. Pike. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2007. Pp. xvii+377. $27.95.
As an urban archaeologist I have always been drawn to that which is underground, that which is unknown. Beginning first with the basement of his boyhood home near Louisville, Kentucky, David Pike too has been fascinated by the unknown underground spaces that are part of the fabric of the urban world. This volume, like his previous Subterranean Cities: TheWorld beneath Paris and London, 1800-1945, considers underground spaces and attitudes about such spaces that have affected the ways that we see, think about, and live in the modern city. His argument, in essence, is that contemporary attitudes about urban places were forged in the experiences and fears of the nineteenth century.
Following a preface and acknowledgments, the book is presented in four chapters. In the first, "The Devil, the Underground, and the Vertical City," Pike expands on concepts briefly introduced in Subterranean Cities. The vertical city and its complementary modes of perception, the view from above and the view from below, define the range of...