A passionate guide to discover the invisible world that is usually hidden under a blanket of concrete.
A very thin layer of soil contains the highest density of life on the planet. The ground is an extraordinarily various ecosystem, and it is also the most unselfish, allowing everything above it to exist.

A crucial regulator of the climate and custodian of a third of the Earth’s biodiversity, soil is the habitat of billions of creatures that allow plants to survive, a precious reservoir of water and the source of almost all the food eaten by animals and humans. Yet we seem oblivious to its status as a living creature and continue to disregard it. Cement, asphalt, microplastics, pesticides, erosion and fires are the blows that mortally wound the planet’s most fragile and vital ecosystem (it takes 2000 years for soil to grow just 10 centimetres). Off the agenda of common goods, soil remains a market product, a resource to be ruthlessly consumed, with dramatic consequences for all of us. Paolo Pileri takes us on a journey to discover the extraordinary ecological richness of the soil, its incredible generosity and its benefits, pointing out those who have the ingratitude to damage it: logistics, intensive agriculture, pollutants, quarries, wars, building incentives, ski slopes, solar parks, urban plans and much more.