Synopses & Reviews
In the tradition of Jon Krakauers
Into Thin Air and Sebastian Jungers
The Perfect Storm comes a true tale of riveting adventure in which two weekend scuba divers risk everything to solve a great historical mystery-and make history themselves.
For John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, deep wreck diving was more than a sport. Testing themselves against treacherous currents, braving depths that induced hallucinatory effects, navigating through wreckage as perilous as a minefield, they pushed themselves to their limits and beyond, brushing against death more than once in the rusting hulks of sunken ships.
But in the fall of 1991, not even these courageous divers were prepared for what they found 230 feet below the surface, in the frigid Atlantic waters sixty miles off the coast of New Jersey: a World War II German U-boat, its ruined interior a macabre wasteland of twisted metal, tangled wires, and human bones-all buried under decades of accumulated sediment.
No identifying marks were visible on the submarine or the few artifacts brought to the surface. No historian, expert, or government had a clue as to which U-boat the men had found. In fact, the official records all agreed that there simply could not be a sunken U-boat and crew at that location.
Over the next six years, an elite team of divers embarked on a quest to solve the mystery. Some of them would not live to see its end. Chatterton and Kohler, at first bitter rivals, would be drawn into a friendship that deepened to an almost mystical sense of brotherhood with each other and with the drowned U-boat sailors-former enemies of their country. As the mens marriages frayed under the pressure of a shared obsession, their dives grew more daring, and each realized that he was hunting more than the identities of a lost U-boat and its nameless crew.
Author Robert Kursons account of this quest is at once thrilling and emotionally complex, and it is written with a vivid sense of what divers actually experience when they meet the dangers of the oceans underworld. The story of Shadow Divers often seems too amazing to be true, but it all happened, two hundred thirty feet down, in the deep blue sea.
Review
"The play on words is irresistible: Once you dive into Kurson's estimable book, you will not surface again till the end." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Review
"Absorbing...From U-boat history to the mortal dangers of diving...Kurson explains it all, even as he's spinning a fantastic yarn that happens to be true." Newsweek
Review
"Exquisitely researched and superbly told...will leave even armchair adventurers gasping for breath." People (Critic's Choice...four stars)
Review
"[A] well-paced tale of adventure on the high seas." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Shadow Divers surely ranks with Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm and Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air in the realm of nonfiction adventure." Chicago Sun-Times
Synopsis
In 1991, acting on a tip from a local fisherman, two recreational scuba divers discovered a sunken German U-boat 60 miles off the New Jersey coast. The wreck lay in 230 feet of ocean water, too deep and dangerous for all but the most accomplished scuba divers. The submarine's crew perhaps 60 men lay dead inside. No historian, expert or government had a clue as to which U-boat the divers had found. By all accounts, there simply could not be a sunken U-boat and crew at this location. Soon, the divers realized that if they did not pursue this mystery, it would remain forever unsolved.
Over the next six years, these men devoted their lives to identifying this sunken U-boat and its crew. They became expert and well-traveled researchers, taught themselves German, befriended U-boat aces, turned back fanatics and conspiracy theorists, hunted clues in Germany, corrected history books presumed to be gospel, and constructed original and ingenious theories. In between, they made some of the most daring and dangerous scuba dives ever attempted.
Over those six years, three of their colleagues died exploring the wreck, including a father and son team. As the challenge grew more deadly and the clues dried up, the two divers once bitter rivals became best friends. As the mystery choked their marriages and threatened to consume them, each realized that he was on more than a mission to identify a lost U-boat. Each of them, they realized, was on a mission to discover himself.
In 1997, when it looked as if the U-boat would never surrender her name, the two divers conceived a plan so daring, so risky, that each of them presumed it would end in death. The book concludes with this final dive one that literally came down to the final breath.
Synopsis
Our species is more profoundly connected to the sea than we ever realized, as an intrepid cadre of scientists, athletes, and explorers is now discovering. Deep follows these adventurers into the ocean to report on the latest findings about its wondrous biology and#8212; and unimagined human abilities.
Synopsis
An Amazon Best Book of 2014 While on assignment in Greece, journalist James Nestor witnessed something that confounded him: a man diving 300 feet below the oceanandrsquo;s surface on a single breath of air and returning four minutes later, unharmed and smiling.
This man was a freediver, and his amphibious abilities inspired Nestor to seek out the secrets of this little-known discipline. In Deep, Nestor embeds with a gang of extreme athletes and renegade researchers who are transforming not only our knowledge of the planet and its creatures, but also our understanding of the human body and mind. Along the way, he takes us from the surface to the Atlanticandrsquo;s greatest depths, some 28,000 feet below sea level. He finds whales that communicate with other whales hundreds of miles away, sharks that swim in unerringly straight lines through pitch-black waters, and seals who dive to depths below 2,400 feet for up to eighty minutesandmdash;deeper and longer than scientists ever thought possible. As strange as these phenomena are, they are reflections of our own speciesandrsquo; remarkable, and often hidden, potentialandmdash;including echolocation, directional sense, and the profound physiological changes we undergo when underwater. Most illuminating of all, Nestor unlocks his own freediving skills as he communes with the pioneers who are expanding our definition of what is possible in the natural world, and in ourselves.
About the Author
JAMES NESTOR has written for Outside Magazine, Menand#39;s Journal, Dwell Magazine, the New York Times, San Francisco Magazine, Interior Design, the San Francisco Chronicle, and numerous other publications. His longform piece andquot;Half-Safe,andquot; about the only around-the-world journey by land and sea in the same vehicle ever attempted (and completed), was published by The Atavist. Nestor lives in San Francisco and is a member of the San Francisco Writersand#39; Grotto.
Table of Contents
0and#160;|and#160;1
and#160;and#8722;60and#160;|and#160;12
and#160;and#8722;300and#160;|and#160;27
and#160;and#8722;650and#160;|and#160;54
and#160;and#8722;800and#160;|and#160;81
and#160;and#8722;1,000and#160;|and#160;100
and#160;and#8722;2,500and#160;|and#160;126
and#160;and#8722;10,000and#160;|and#160;159
and#160;and#8722;28,700and#160;|and#160;201
and#160;Ascentsand#160;|and#160;222
and#160;Epilogueand#160;|and#160;228
and#160;Acknowledgmentsand#160;|and#160;234
and#160;Notesand#160;|and#160;239
and#160;Bibliographyand#160;|and#160;247
and#160;Indexand#160;|and#160;257