Book Review: The World Beneath Our Feet by Frank Ashwood

Traveling The World To Look Into Dirt. This is one of those books that will be *very* appealing to some... and others (most?) will walk right on by, just as they do literally every day with the subject at hand - the very ground they walk on and the vast ecosystem that thrives in the few inches or so between your feet and the rock that is somewhere underneath them.

Here, Ashwood - apparently both a scientist actively studying this largely unknown (by people generally) biome and an enthusiast who enjoys doing macrophotography of it - shines a light on a dark and largely blind world to help educate those of us who live in the lit and generally sighted world above it. (To be clear, this is a very broad illustration and not meant as a slight to those with vision difficulties of any version.)

Along the way, we're going to travel the world with Ashwood as he studies and photographs the world of "creepy crawlies" as so many of us know them and allow us to gain a better appreciation for just how beautiful these creatures can be - and how utterly essential they are to our lives, whether or not we have ever realized this. The advance reader copy edition I read did not have the pictures that are apparently included in the full print versions (both *ahem* dead tree *ahem* (paper) and eBook), so while I normally don't make a specific format recommendation, I do think that in this case many, perhaps most, readers would do well to have some version of the book that includes the pictures, as even the descriptions of them within the text I did have seem truly stunning... even for creatures many of us generally consider... not so pleasant to look at.

Overall a solid book that is deep enough in the science to teach nearly all of us something we didn't previously know, and evocative enough in the descriptions of both the author's travels and what he is seeing to make the lesson truly palatable and even enjoyable.

Very much recommended.

This review of The World Beneath Our Feet by Frank Ashwood was originally written on October 1, 2026.