The Bathysphere Book

Effects of the Luminous Ocean Depths

This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.
Buy on Amazon Buy on BN.com Buy on Bookshop.org
*This page contains affiliate links, so we may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through links on our site at no additional cost to you.
Send NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app

1
To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
2
Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.
Pub Date 16 May 2023 | Archive Date 19 Jun 2023

Talking about this book? Use #TheBathysphereBook #NetGalley. More hashtag tips!


Description

Winner of the 2024 National Book Foundation's Science + Literature Award

A Washington Post top 10 best book of 2023

A Publishers Weekly best nonfiction book of 2023

"Hypnotic . . . Beautifully written and beautifully made."
W. M. Akers, The New York Times Book Review

"one of the most beautiful books-as-objects of the year"
The Globe and Mail

"...one of the most fascinating and unusual new books I’ve read in some time."
Benjamin Shull, The Wall Street Journal

"...a weird and often beautiful fusion of science writing, history and poetry that explores our own relationship with the unknown..."
Edward Posnett, The Guardian


"Mesmerizing . . . Original and often profound, [The Bathysphere Book] is a moving testament to the wonders of exploration."
Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

"Imbued with the adventurous spirit of science and exploration . . . [The Bathysphere Book is] an enchanting cabinet of curiosities."
Kirkus Reviews

A wide ranging, philosophical, and sensual account of early deep sea exploration and its afterlives, The Bathysphere Book begins with the first ever voyage to the deep ocean in 1930 and expands to explore the adventures and entanglements of its all-too-human participants at a time when the world still felt entirely new.

In the summer of 1930, aboard a ship floating near the Atlantic island of Nonsuch, marine biologist Gloria Hollister sat on a crate, writing furiously in a notebook with a telephone receiver pressed to her ear. The phone line was attached to a steel cable that plunged 3,000 feet into the sea. There, suspended by the cable, dangled a four-and-a-half-foot steel ball called the bathysphere. Crumpled inside, gazing through three-inch quartz windows at the undersea world, was Hollister’s colleague William Beebe. He called up to her, describing previously unseen creatures, explosions of bioluminescence, and strange effects of light and color.

From this momentous first encounter with the unknown depths, The Bathysphere Book widens its scope to explore a transforming and deeply paradoxical America, as the first great skyscrapers rose above New York City and the Great Plains baked to dust. In prose that is magical, atmospheric, and entirely engrossing, Brad Fox dramatizes new visions of our planetary home, delighting in tales of the colorful characters who surrounded, supported, and participated in the dives—from groundbreaking scientists and gallivanting adventurers to eugenicist billionaires.

The Bathysphere Book is a hypnotic assemblage of brief chapters along with over fifty full-color images, records from the original bathysphere logbooks, and the moving story of surreptitious romance between Beebe and Hollister that anchors their exploration. Brad Fox blurs the line between poetry and research, unearthing and rendering a visionary meeting with the unknown.
Winner of the 2024 National Book Foundation's Science + Literature Award

A Washington Post top 10 best book of 2023

A Publishers Weekly best nonfiction book of 2023

"Hypnotic . . . Beautifully written...

Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9781662601903
PRICE $29.00 (USD)
PAGES 336

Available on NetGalley

NetGalley Shelf App (PDF)
Send to Kindle (PDF)
Download (PDF)

Average rating from 7 members


Featured Reviews

As we increasingly look towards the skies and beyond to search for meaning and answers beyond the Earth, this book chooses differently, peering into the dark depths of history, towards the first furitve explorations of the bottom of the ocean.

Was this review helpful?

This was really interesting, I picked it up hoping it would help with some work related questions I had and it really did. Very fascinating look at something that not too many people know about. Really enjoyed

Was this review helpful?

An extremely beautiful book—as much a poetic meditation on the nature of exploration as it is a blow-by-blow of what actually occurred. The illustrations are amazing. I cannot recommend highly enough.

Was this review helpful?

A love letter to the allure of ocean exploration. This book made me desperately want to build my own bathysphere. Individual pages resonated with me so much that I had to keep putting it down to have some memories and visions of my future. It works better if you think of it as a collection of vignettes and archival research and don't look for a plot. If anyone wondered how scientists romanticize their jobs, it's like this.

Was this review helpful?

When I stumbled across this title on NetGalley, I immediately requested it. I wanted to know about the breakthroughs in marine biology, this period in U.S. history, this approach to telling a story. I'd also heard of Brad Fox and had been meaning to pick up his 2020 book, but now that his 2023 book had arrived, I figured I may as well start with this one, so I did.

This is a mind-altering prose excursion that I have read three times, and each time I go down, it's like seeing the same ocean in a different permutation of the dive, with a new discovery each time. I am not done with this book. Or it is not done with me. There isn't a conventional structure so I can't tell you exactly how it works or if there is a structure at all or an absence of structure. Everything is connected, but the book is not just one thing; it is a symbiotically stuck-together organism(s), or it is a metamorphic rock, or it is not a creature or thing at all but an environment in which creatures live and things exist. You just keep looking, looking, looking, and at the point where you don't know what small things you're looking for and you're not focusing on anything specific but are gazing indirectly, that's when the bigger picture emerges and takes over, and it has no name.

Descending into this place of unknowingness changed the way bathysphere guy William Beebe thought about knowledge or what could be known.

Was this review helpful?

This was a fascinating book. I think all humans are at least a little enamored with and scared of the ocean (I certainly am). And any account of exploring the depths is bound to gain attention. Rather than simply recounting the history of early bathyspheres and expeditions, Fox tries to capture the emotion the early explorers felt. He includes excerpts from their journals, asides about the history of color, and a flexible format, all of which keep the reader engaged and able to imagine themselves alongside Beebe and Hollister.

Was this review helpful?

Readers who liked this book also liked: