 | |
 View Larger |
Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II By Robert Kurson ( Ballantine Books )
Release Date: 2005-05-31
Average Customer Rating:
List Price: $7.50
Price: $7.50
Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
|  Add to Cart |
|
|
Product Description
In the tradition of Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air and Sebastian Junger’s 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 men’s 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 Kurson’s 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 ocean’s 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.
From the Hardcover edition.
|
|
 Great adventure book
This was a heart pounding adventure book. Once the story really started unfolding, there was new twists and turns around every corner. Once the submarine was found, it became an obsession for the two divers who spearheaded the exploration to identify this unknown u-boat. Deep sea diving has such a high risk factor, many divers lost their lives diving to this wreck. It was a fascinating and very well written book, with an immense amount of research in it. This book made me want to go out and begin scuba diving. Well worth reading.
|
Underwater action adventure! ( igrigorik )
A real underwater adventure and a fantastic read! At times it was hard to believe the risks that Chatterton and Kohler, the main characters of the book, undertook to solve the mystery of U-869 - a shipwreck of a WW2 U-boat they discovered in the early 90's. They've lost three fellow divers, their personal lives went through a storm, they saw burnouts and despair, but after years of deep diving into the archives and the sea, they finally identify the wreck. Shadow Divers is a great story about perseverance, character, and dedication to a goal. Highly recommended!
|
 ++++
Fascinating, and I did not even particularly desire to dive wrecks. It was my initial dive story read as a new diver and not only intrigued me but taught me a great deal of this world I had got myself into. And inspired further education in the myriad aspects of diving. To my knowledge; the most recommended Dive Book must read.
|
An excellent book...period. ( lorzilla )
I read Shadow Divers while on a dive vacation in the Virgin Islands. I had just completed a tourist grade wreck dive (Miss Opportunity) when I cracked open Shadow Divers for the first time. This book reached out, grabbed me by my BC, yanked me in and didn't let go until it was finished. It is a well-crafted and perfectly presented account of 2 men who overcame a deep and competitive dislike for one another to unravel a 250 foot deep mystery that ultimately became a life's obsession for both of them. Shadow Divers takes the reader into the life & unbelievably well-controlled mind of the deep wreck diver and further into the shared philosophy of 2 men who HAD to reveal the identity of a mysterious sunken U-boat off the New Jersey coast. It is written so well that even if the reader has absolutely no interest in scuba diving, has no prior knowlege of U-boats & associated World War II history, and has never even snorkeled a day is his life, he won't be able to put it down. The author winds the story expertly through the lives of the young men as they grow older and mature into expert researchers and master diving skills that most other divers think impossible; the effects that this obsession had on their lives & families; on their friendship; on the world class diver boat captain as he succumbs to losing his grip on diving & life to alcohol; through the deaths of several divers as the mystery unfolds, and finally through the discovered history of this U-boat and the men that were and are still aboard today.
This is an amazing story, expertly told. If it were non-fiction, it wouldn't be believable. Read it.
|
Shadow Divers
I totally enjoyed Shadow Divers. It kept your interest right up to the end. Would recommend this book for history lovers and divers. Full of suspense and mystery. Couldn't put the book down.
Kathy Kauranen
|
|
|
