Beneath the Metropolis: The Secret Lives of Cities - Hardcover

Tours one dozen cities that were built below street level, profiling each for their archaeological histories, geological features, and engineering innovations, in a reference that includes coverage of such regions as the first-century catacombs of Rome, the New York subway system, and Mexico City's depleted aquifer.

Alex Marshall, an independent journalist in New York City, is the author of How Cities Work: Suburbs, Sprawl and The Roads Not Taken, and is a Senior Fellow at the Regional Plan Association in New York City. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Metropolis Magazine, Salon, Slate and many other publications. A former staff writer for The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Marshall was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University in 1999-2000. Marshall holds a master's degree in Journalism from Columbia University in New York, and a bachelor's degree in Political Economy and Spanish from Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Marshall lives in Brooklyn with his wife, the documentary film editor Kristin Barlow, and their son Max.