Why am I passionate about this?
When I turned 13, I decided to become an oceanographer. To prepare for my future career, I majored in geology and biology in college. I mapped ancient volcanic outcrops around Boston, explored a deep mine and dug for minerals on a geology tour of the southeastern United States, and sampled sand from a tropical beach on a tiny island in the Bahamas. I discovered that geologists have fun! A geology field trip to Kilauea in Hawaii inspired me to examine how volcanoes, on land and beneath the sea, impact our oceans. After that, a week in Iceland, the Land of Fire and Ice, further cemented my love of rocks and volcanoes.
Mary's book list on the wonder of volcanoes above below ocean
Why did Mary love this book?
As soon as I opened the pages of this book, I thought, “I want to be her!” …if only I were braver and not claustrophobic. At least I could accompany writer Susan Casey vicariously on her lifelong quest to go as deep in the ocean as humanly possible.
When I graduated college, I volunteered on an oceanographic cruise to study the Gulf Stream. Even in my most adventure-seeking days, I am pretty certain that I would not have lobbied to dive to the deepest ocean trenches or to an erupting undersea volcano that will one day be the sixth island in the Hawaiian Islands chain. Tourists won’t be able to view Lo’ihi until it breaks the ocean surface in 10,000 to 100,000 years.
4 authors picked The Underworld as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
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…