From Nick Shay, a waste management executive who grew up in the Bronx, to the history of the baseball that won the New York Giants the pennant in 1951. Underworld encompasses numerous subplots drawn from American history in the second half of the twentieth century. Described as both postmodernist and a reaction to postmodernism, it examines themes of nuclear proliferation, waste, and the contribution of individual lives to the course of history.