Hidden Nature: Wild Southern Caves
Hidden Nature is a work of well-researched fact that reads like a personal narrative of the author’s long attraction to Southern caves and the people who dare enter their hidden chambers. The book describes a “golden age of caving” that originated in the American South and spread throughout the world. Now available in audiobook.
Cave Passages: Roaming the Underground Wilderness
Taylor balances astute scientific reportage with humor, conveying the sport’s allure so infectiously that anyone who reads Cave Passages will want to strap on a carbide lamp and clamber down after him.
Dark Life
Martian Nanobacteria, Rock-Eating Cave Bugs, and Other Extreme Organisms of Inner Earth and Outer Space
In an account that is half cave adventure, half science venture, Taylor describes what it’s like to collecting samples in the deep and dark and what happens later when experts battle over what the depths reveal.
Caves: Exploring Hidden Realms
A companion volume to the IMAX film Journey into Amazing Caves, this National Geographic book offers a sumptuously illustrated, close-up look at a variety of cave environments, capturing the wonders and perils of these underground habitats.
The Cat Manual
Humorous advice for cats, by cats. The author “discovered” the feline world’s best-kept secret in a file hidden on his mother’s computer by her cat, Cleo, and now shares it with humanity for the first time. Available for Amazon Kindle and from Audible.
Creating Comics as Journalism, Memoir and Nonfiction
Co-authored with renowned comics scholar Randy Duncan and artist and designer David Stoddard, this textbook provides the tools and techniques needed to tell nonfiction stories visually and graphically.
Blurbs and Reviews
Praise for Dark Life
“Mixing science and adventure writing, Taylor describes fact-finding and collecting expeditions into uncharted caves. … He does a commendable job of vivifying the beauty of these strange environments and the passions of the scientists who study them.”
— Publisher’s Weekly
“Gormenghast could scarcely prove more vivid in its descriptions nor Dante lead us into stranger realms. Piranesi could hardly have etched dungeons more eerie, more teasing to the imagination, more fascinating to the eye. Fiction could not craft a realm more bizarre than the troglodytic domain of these microbial scientists.”
— The London Times
“In an account that is half cave adventure, half science venture, intrepid journalist Taylor tells what it’s like to collect bacteria samples in the deep and dark and what happens later when experts battle over what the depths reveal. … Along the way we are treated to graphic descriptions of caving here and abroad: rappeling down sheer cave walls, crawling inch by inch in hot muddy water, wearing masks against hydrogen sulfide and carbon monoxide vapors, and gathering slimy mats of biofilm called ‘snottites.’ … Readers can relish eyewitness accounts of academic fur flying and the nonclaustrophobic can experience the vicarious thrills of cavers for whom getting there is a lot of the fun.
— Kirkus Reviews
“What a fascinating book! Michael Ray Taylor is an adventurous science reporter who crawls his way through the world’s deepest caves gathering unknown forms of life, at the same time picking up a great story about how science is really done, full of mystery and human quirkiness. Dark Life winds like passages in a cave, leading us to surprising insights into nature.”
— Richard Preston
“In Dark Life Taylor takes his place with Richard Preston, James Glieck, Richard Rhodes and others who with both precision and flair for narrative suspense and storytelling take us places that no science fiction authors could possibly imagine.”
— William Harrison
“The story is compelling not just for the fascinating nature of the discoveries made, but also for the insider’s view it offers of science as a working community. … At heart, a celebration of life — human, as well as theoretical.”
— School Library Journal
“Taylor is an amateur science enthusiast — so enthusiastic he talked himself into some science teams descending deep into caves to collect microbes. … A lively account with the encouraging subtext that some areas of science can still welcome participation by the nondegreed.”
— Booklist
“If you want a status report on how astrobiologists are using the Earth as a laboratory for what life may be possible on other worlds, this is it. Moreover, if you are looking for proof that science can still be a bona fide adventure in this Internet-shrunken world, then this book offers that as well.”
— SpaceRef.com
“This is a fine book. The reader confronts a new idea on each page. … a superb adventure through all sorts of exciting new concepts.”
— American Scientist
“A good introduction to life in extreme environments on Earth.”
— The Quarterly Review of Biology
“Taylor brings us … a fascinating account of living things most of us are totally unaware of. Entertaining, informative, and worthy of your attention.”
— Analog Science Fiction & Fact
“Maverick science as adventure, about mysterious subterranean creatures that may redefine the concept of evolution. Watch the academic fur fly. … One of the best books of 1999.
— The Anomolist
“Michael Ray Taylor, investigative journalist and spelunker, writes a fascinating tale of the finding and scrutiny of such nanobacteria and gives a wonderful catalog of the researchers and their tribulations.”
— Fred Jueneman in R&D Magazine
Praise for Cave Passages
“Taylor proves a knowledgeable guide … He has introduced the reader to untouched wildernesses that few people will ever see.”
— Washington Post
“Imbued with the Wonder and exhilaration of the vast underground spaces.”
— Playboy
“This is an involving introduction to another mysterious world.”
— Publisher’s Weekly
“If you’re a fan of Peter Matthiessen and Paul Theroux, this is one to grab.”
— Virginian-Pilot
“In the tradition of the book The Right Stuff and the movie Apollo 13 … Cave Passages does a tremendous job of explaining the people who make the science possible.”
— Geotimes
“Exploration in the most truly profound sense. Or senses: the fascinating real labyrinth of underground, the subterranean part of the mind, and the probing sense of blind — pure — adventure. The reader comes up from the depths into a light that has changed forever, for the better and more mysterious.”
— James Dickey
“Beneath — in the great, mythic hollows of the earth itself — lies a separate world, timeless and in large part still unknown where one travels in darkness through mazelike tunnels, down cliffs, in icy streams, and through passages so narrow that there comes a point where there is not room to breathe and the panic of death begins. To enter this world — the enormous cave in the Bighorns called Great X, the spectacular hidden chambers of Lechuguilla, and the bottomless sinkhole at Zacatón, where the legendary Exley lost his life — places you have not heard of but which you will not soon forget, you need a good and true guide. This is his thrilling book.”
— James Salter
“Finally, a well-written book about the glories and dangers of caving. Michael Ray Taylor has a wry sense of humor. Recommended for both the curious and the hard core.”
— Tim Cahill
Praise for Caves: Exploring Hidden Realms
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.
— Booklist
Praise for The Cat Manual
“Do you love cats? Do you have a cat? If yes, then this book is for you. … It is dead-on when describing the behavior of cats as well as humans.”
— Mysteries Etc.
“Cats don’t talk, but if they did, they would probably say some of the things in this book.”
— one-elevenbooks.com
“I guarantee a lot of chuckles, and some ‘Aha! So that’s why’ moments to any readers who have ever lived with a feline, or thought they ‘owned’ one. Fun, funny, and it will give you new insight into the minds of these mysterious creatures.”
— Karen Watts’ Blog About Pets and Books
“Cats rule the world, and we just rent it from them for a daily can of cat food. The Cat Manual explains how this came to be.”
— Cats and Crime