In the spirit of Bill Bryson and Ian Frazier comes this fascinating examination of our past, present, and future beneath the waves.
In an age of unprecedented exploration and innovation, our oceans remain largely unknown, and endlessly fascinating: full of mystery, danger, beauty, and inspiration. Bill Streever-a longtime deep-sea diver himself-has masterfully woven together the science and history of Earth’s last remaining frontier: the sea.
In Oceans Deep celebrates the daring pioneers who tested the limits of what the human body can endure under water: . free divers able to reach 300 feet on a single breath; engineers and scientists who uncovered the secrets of decompression; teenagers who built their own diving gear from discarded boilers and garden hoses in the 1930s; saturation divers who lived under water for weeks at a time in the 1960s; and the trailblazing men who voluntarily breathed experimental gases at pressures sufficient to trigger insanity.
Tracing both the little-known history and exciting future of how we travel and study the depths, Streever’s captivating journey includes seventeenth-century leather-hulled submarines, their nuclear-powered descendants, a workshop where luxury submersibles are built for billionaire clients, and robots capable of roving unsupervised between continents, revolutionizing access to the ocean.
In this far-flung trip to the wild, night-dark place of shipwrecks, trapped submariners, oil wells, innovative technologies, and people willing to risk their lives while challenging the deep, we discover all the adventures our seas have to offer-and why they are in such dire need of conservation.
About the Author
Bill Streever is the bestselling and award-winning authors of And Soon I Heard a Roaring Wind, Cold, and Heat. As a biologist, he has worked on issues ranging from climate change to the restoration of Arctic tundra to underwater noise to the evolution of cave crayfish. With his wife and co-captain, he splits his time between Alaska and their cruising sailboat, currently in Central America.
Praise For…
“With a real knack for
storytelling, Streever evocatively puts the reader in the helmets, flippers,
and submersibles of sea explorers throughout history…Streever crafts a book to
be enjoyed by divers and general readers alike.”— Publishers Weekly
“A
buoyant, at times thrilling, account of the deep sea experience, perfect for
divers and other lovers of life beneath the waves.”— Kirkus Review
Praise for And Soon I Heard a Roaring Wind
“The wind is always changeable, whether it’s a brisk nor’easter or the shifting tempests of intellectual history. And Soon I Heard Roaring Wind proves that Bill Streever is a master at navigating both.”—Sam Kean, author of Caesar’s Last Breath and The Disappearing Spoon
“Science, history, and personal adventure come together in a wild and witty exploration of wind. When Streever deals with a natural phenomenon, he does so with aplomb…[he] has a knack for blending his research and personal experience into an easy-to-read account that is hard to put down.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Clear prose animated by deadpan humor and enthusiasm for all things meteorological…. Streever absorbingly explains the processes that make air move….”—Publishers Weekly
“Streever covers the science of wind and weather and the history of weather forecasting in an authoritative, well-researched, and engrossing text…. A riveting, detailed look at the power of wind, along with the pleasures and perils of sailing….This page-turning work of narrative nonfiction will appeal to readers interested in the history of science, the history and science of meteorology, the science of wind, and memoirs of life at sea.”—Sue O’Brien, Library Journal
