This book dives into the abysses of the sea and our uneducated beliefs of what’s down there and how life, as we know it, emerged on Earth.
“Why do they look like that?” fish. “How do they survive down there?” sea life. The wonderous slip sliding of plate tectonics that shoves the skin of the Earth inches every year. We get a glimpse of the garbage (including atom bombs!) that we have dumped in our oceans without care.
Casey writes in conversational, visceral clarity as she reveals mysteries of the ages of shipwrecks, birthing islands, and the miracles deep, deep, deep. Breathtaking. Thought-provoking.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From bestselling author Susan Casey, an awe-inspiring portrait of the mysterious world beneath the waves, and the men and women who seek to uncover its secrets
“An irresistible mix of splendid scholarship, heart-stopping adventure writing, and vivid, visceral prose." —Sy Montgomery, New York Times best-selling author of The Soul of an Octopus
For all of human history, the deep ocean has been a source of wonder and terror, an unknown realm that evoked a singular, compelling question: What’s down there? Unable to answer this for centuries, people believed the deep was a sinister realm of…
This book was given to me by a friend who traveled the Sierra Madres of Western Mexico. I’d phone him after turning a page on each spine-stiffening episode to screech, “Are you crazy?!”
The landscape envelopes with stark beauty. The glimpses into the lives of the people who try to survive the human dangers helped me understand why families are willing to risk crossing the U.S. border. The human threat, on both sides of “the law” and the natural threat of the rough landscape, makes for a heart-pounding read.
I was sucked in by Richard Grant’s “Whew! We survived that one” style of writing. Laugh while their lives hang before your reading eyes.
From the acclaimed author of Dispatches From Pluto and Deepest South of All, a harrowing travelogue into Mexico’s lawless Sierra Madre mountains.
Twenty miles south of the Arizona-Mexico border, the rugged, beautiful Sierra Madre mountains begin their dramatic ascent. Almost 900 miles long, the range climbs to nearly 11,000 feet and boasts several canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon. The rules of law and society have never taken hold in the Sierra Madre, which is home to bandits, drug smugglers, Mormons, cave-dwelling Tarahumara Indians, opium farmers, cowboys, and other assorted outcasts. Outsiders are not welcome; drugs are the primary source…
Susan Casey chased the massive swells with the Big Wave surfers in HI. She exposed the actual frequency of the “rogue waves” that drown ships. We marvel with her at the 1,700+ foot wave that slammed Alaska and the fisherman who survived and how humans insist on building on shores, not believing tsunamis will happen again with the juggernaut of climate change feeding the waves.
Casey educates us who are not Oceanographers, fearless surfers, or North Atlantic seafarers. She takes us with her on her adventure and education. I will never take the wave lapping at my feet for granted again.
The have long been mariners' tales of 100-foot rogue waves - gargantuan monsters that sink super-tankers in the blink of an eye.
But waves that high violate the laws of physics, so science has dismissed them as myth. Until now.
In February 2000 the research ship, RRS Discovery, was trapped by a vortex of mammoth waves in the North Atlantic. Amazingly the ship survived and its state-of-the-art equipment registered waves nearing 100-feet. Something scary is brewing in the planet's waters. And with 72% of earth covered by sea, this is serious business.
My book is an irreverent tacking through the stormy seas of loss. It is a “How It Is” book, a gust against “give-up-itis.” As we struggle to keep our heads above the squall, grasping at normal, we get such sage advice as “You should get a dog.” Get a dog! That’s the solution to the shipwreck that’s my life?
“How are you?” ranks as the most trying question asked of a griever. Answers as to why and a few snappy retorts for a macabre comedy relief lighten the journey. We who grieve, feel loss, and who need a smile sail together in this book. Bonus, this book is a primer on what not to say to a friend mired in loss.
