| Review | Journal of Social History, 40.3

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| Review | Journal of Social History, 40.3 | The History Cooperative

REVIEWS

Subterranean Cities: TheWorld Beneath Paris and London, 1800–1945. By David L. Pike (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2005. xviii plus 355 pp. $65.00).

Advertised on its back cover under the headings "History/Europe" and "Cultural Studies," this volume can best be described for social historians as an ambitious, wide-ranging, and spirited example of mainly literary analysis that casts a sometimes bright but also somewhat uneven light on the subjects announced in its title. Examining urban history both from on high, via representations by leading writers (among a multitude of other observers) and from below (in the sense that the perspectives he analyzes overwhelmingly focus on settings and experiences beneath street level), Pike has produced a stimulating and challenging book. It takes a prominent place in what has become, during the past few decades, a substantial corpus of writing about ways in which urban life has been refracted through the lenses of contemporary witnesses. In comparison, however, with earlier works, such as ones by Raymond Williams and Burton Pike,¹ this one is likely to prove rather taxing for historians who are unaccustomed to reading literary criticism, and even if one takes it as a given that the author is doing cultural rather than social history it leaves major questions unclearly answered.

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