With more than 100 full-color photographs, The Wilderness Underground lifts the veil of darkness from the spectacular beauty of the Ozark caves.  Master photographers capture primitive cavescapes of water-sculpted rock forms, pits, canyons, streams, and living creatures both sighted and blind. H. Dwight Weaver's engaging text explores the diverse topography of the Ozark Plateau.  Weaver traces the mystique of caves from the days of Native American Indians to the 1950s when modern cave explorers began the great cave quest that has led to the discovery of more than 6,000 caves in the region and introduces the reader to past and present denizens of the Ozark caves. The Ozark Plateau, with over 6500 known caves, is the largest elevated land mass in the United States between the Appalachians and the Rocky Mountains. Weaver, a public information specialist for the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, writes about the commitment to conserving the vibrant wilderness beneath the Ozark Plateau. Various acts of law (e.g., the federal Wilderness Act of 1964 and the Missouri Cave Resources Act of 1980) give special protection to the plateau. This work does not qualify as a cave directory, although Weaver briefly surveys some caves near mountains, rivers, springs, and nearby towns. The superb, full-color photos (over 100), eminently readable text, and attractive format on high-quality paper make this a stunning production. Recommended. - Eugene J. Millich, formerly with Univ. of Wisconsin-LaCrosse Lib. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. "The superb, full-color photos (over 100), eminently readable text, and attractive format on high-quality paper make this a stunning production. Recommended."--Library Journal (starred review) "A spectacular, general interest book on the karst geology of the Ozark Mountains of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Kansas. Weaver . . . describes the land, cave formation, groundwater, cave life for the lay reader. His text is splendidly embellished by some 110 of the best detailed and most aesthetic color plates of cave formation ever published."--Scitech Book News "The Wilderness Underground is the finest work on Missouri caves to come along since Luella Agnes Owen, a geologist from St. Joseph published her explorations in 1898. . . . The Wilderness Underground is a history lesson, a geography lesson, a bit of biology and a random sampling of history rolled into one easy-on-the-eyes book. It's a long-overdue look at one reason Missouri is such an interesting state."--Rural Missouri H. Dwight Weaver , (text author for The Wilderness Underground ),  is a public information specialist for the Missouri Department of Natural Resources in Jefferson City, Missouri.  Author of Missouri, the Cave State , Weaver is co-founder of Missouri Speleogy and has been exploring caves for thirty-five years. James N. Huckins , (photo editor for The Wilderness Underground ), a caver for twenty-five years, is a research environmental chemist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Columbia, Missouri.  He has served as a judge for the annual photography contest of the National Association for Conservation Information. Rickard L. Walk , (photo editor for The Wilderness Underground ),  is a certified registered nurse anestetist in Columbia, Missouri.  He is an avid outdoor photographer whose work appears in Colorful Missouri .  He has been a caver for ten years. Used Book in Good Condition