Caves: Exploring Hidden Realms (Imax) [Hardcover]

Michael Ray Taylor (Author), Ronal C. Kerbo (Author)

Book Description

Series: Imax | Publication Date: March 1, 2001

For today's explorer, Earth offers precious few uncharted regions. Even the deepest trenches in the Pacific have been mapped by sonar, and if you venture to the most remote village on the Amazon, you're more than likely to find natives wearing Nikes. The only truly unexplored places that remain -- those that neither humans nor technology has penetrated -- are caves. Until now.

In the course of this breathtaking book, Michael Ray Taylor guides an astounding journey into the wonders and hazards of caving. Along the way, he introduces a pair of expert cavers as they tackle the sweeping, awe-inspiring beauty of Greenland's ice caves; the dramatic underwater realm beneath the jungles of the Yucatan; and the vertigo-inducing pits in the wild caves of the American Southwest. Aided by trailblazing IMAX "RM"? camera technology from the award-winning MacGillivray Freeman Films (Everest, Dolphins, The Living Sea), Caves delivers hundreds of vivid, full-color images of places no large-format camera has ever been before and conveys the excitement, terror, and exhilaration of the world's vast and least accessible spaces. Featuring compelling and informative sidebars from leading cave scientists, Caves also includes a Foteword from Ronald C. Kerbo, chief cave specialist of the U.S. National Park Service.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If you were to travel to the Amazon, say, or the source of the Nile, you would likely find the people there wearing corporate logo-branded T-shirts and listening to the latest pop hits on the radio. Using a GPS device or satellite photos, you can track your location just about anywhere on the face of the planet. Given globalism and the ease of travel to once-remote places, where is a would-be flag-planting adventurer to go these days?

The answer, writes Michael Ray Taylor in this intriguing book, is inward: inside the earth by way of the millions of caves that pierce its surface. Following an international team of fellow cavers--men and women in peak physical form and apparently without fear--his narrative takes us deep within the ice caves of Greenland; a vast underground labyrinth of rivers and chambers in Mexico's Yucatan; a cave on a cliff wall overlooking the Colorado River near the Grand Canyon, one that no human had ever before entered; and other great caverns of North America. High-quality (and sometimes astounding) full-color images accompany the text, offering views that usher us into a world of blind snakes, bats, strange geological formations, and uncanny sights that few surface-dwellers have been privileged to see.

Caving is not merely adventure for its own sake, Taylor notes. "Over the past decade," he observes, "scientists have been surprised to learn that in the deepest recesses of the Earth are repositories of exotic microbes ... far more varied in types of species and their individual strategies for survival than all the plants of an equatorial rain forest." Some of these microbes, he suggests, may deliver chemicals for fighting disease; they also deliver important evidence about the history of life on the planet.

But, all that said, caving offers plenty of thrills, and Taylor's book does a superb job of capturing both the science and the adventure of a journey to the center of the earth. --Gregory McNamee

From Booklist

This visually rich work was produced in conjunction with a National Geographic IMAX project filming spelunkers exploring caves throughout the world. The film follows two female cavers in subterranean sites in Greenland, the Yucatan, and the south-central U.S. The photographs and the story of the explorations would be sufficient to recommend this work, but it also includes fascinating background material on the history of the caves, their biological diversity, the tools used by spelunkers in their explorations, and the geologic forces that have made caves into natural works of art. The sites for this work were obviously, and successfully, chosen because of their visual impact and variety: a giant glacial ice cavern, vast networks of underground rivers, and cramped passageways of dripping delicate crystals. Perhaps the most astounding feature that the book highlights is not the geology but the amazing range of life-forms that prosper in impossibly harsh conditions. Eric Robbins
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: National Geographic (March 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0792279042
• ISBN-13: 978-0792279044
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 0.8 x 12.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #963,354 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Michael Ray Taylor is the author of the books Cave Passages, Dark Life, and Caves, and has published over 100 feature articles and essays in such venues as Sports Illustrated, Audubon, Outside, Reader's Digest, National Geographic Traveler, The Houston Chronicle and the website of The Discovery Channel. He has served as a consultant on feature films and has worked on documentaries for National Geographic, PBS and The Discovery Channel. He is a professor of communication at Henderson State University and lives in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, with his wife, three sons, his father-in-law, two cats and a rat terrier.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you dream of caves, this book is for you., March 9, 2001

By 

Cynthia Powers (The Colony, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Caves: Exploring Hidden Realms (Imax) (Hardcover)

I purchased this book sight unseen and for one reason - it was written by Michael Ray Taylor (I'd read bathroom cleaner cans if he wrote the text for them). When I opened the box, I was stunned to find a coffee-table type book filled with incredibly beautiful photographs and great text. _Caves: Exploring Hidden Realms_ is a (stand alone, IMO) companion to the IMAX film of the same name; Kerbo's pictures are mind-blowing and the text is classic Taylor - accessible, entertaining, educational and just downright fun.

As an added treat, the microbiology angle of _Dark Life_ finds its way into _Caves: Exploring Hidden Realms_ as well. A bit of the text was taken from _Cave Passages_ but a very small bit and this didn't diminish my enjoyment. I can't say enough positive things about this book. Buy it!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great guide to caving, December 12, 2002

By 

nickunt (Nottingham, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Caves: Exploring Hidden Realms (Imax) (Hardcover)

This book is very well written with lovingly detailed chapters devoted to the many splendid cave networks dotted around the world. There's a great section on the flora and fauna of the underworld, as well. I went potholing in Kak Canyon once, and saw a couple of chutney ferrets, all thanks to this book. Incredible creatures - and I wouldn't have known they were there until I read this.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Super cave explorers, February 14, 2002

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Caves: Exploring Hidden Realms (Imax) (Hardcover)

I really liked this book. It has good pictures for people who want to be a cave explorer. It tells you a good description of the caves these people explored. I really liked the fact that they explored ice, water and earth caves. I think students that are studying caves would really like this book