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Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson
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Shadow Divers

by Robert Kurson

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This is a true adventure story about a group of deep wreck divers, who discover a sunken German U-boat sixty miles off the New Jersey coast, back in 1991. It becomes an amazing story, as two of the most prominent divers, try to unravel the mysteries of this lost sub, taking many years and costing several lives in their relentless quest. This author immerses the reader in deep diving culture, which is both thrilling and very deadly. Highly recommended! ( )
1 vote msf59 | Aug 30, 2009 |
Excellent tale of two divers obsessed with discovering the identity of a sunken U-boat off the coast of New Jersey. ( )
  Beemac | Aug 29, 2009 |
I first read "First Dive" by Bernie Chowdry and then my Dad gave me this one... I hesitated to read it because I loved Bernie's telling of the story so much. I knew the Rouses so well after that book that it seemed to me that this book was just a retelling of their fateful dive.

I am very happy that I finally picked it up! It is not a re-telling... it is the story of John and Richie's quest to identify this sunken submarine. Chris and Chrissy's dive was a very small and tragic part of the story. Very well written, researched and crafted. You must read it. ( )
  Cygnus555 | Aug 23, 2009 |
What a fantastic read! This is the story of two deep wreck divers, John Chatterton and Ritchie Kohler who work together to identify a sunken U-boat off the coast of New Jersey.

Mr. Kurson has written a great adventure/detectivie story. And more. His extensive research provides insight into the role of U-boats in WWII, and to conditions on those boats. He also explains deep sea diving technologies and risks.

Mr. Kurson rounds out this excellent tale with sharing insights into the personal motivations and philosophies of the divers. He includes the stories of the crew who died on the U-boat. This comprehensive treatment had me totally enthralled. I found the epilogue is espeically moving.

You don't have to be a history buff or a diver to enjoy this great story of courage, but more importantly, of commitment to your values as a person. ( )
1 vote LynnB | Jul 21, 2009 |
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Series (with order)
Canonical Title
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Awards and honors
Epigraph
Life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come. - Franz Kafka, Diaries
Dedication
For Amy, the answer to my life's research
For Nate, already a seeker
First words
Bill Nagle's life changed the day a fisherman sat beside him in a ramshackle bar and told him about a mystery he had found lying at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
Quotations
Last words
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Canonical titleShadow Divers
People/CharactersJohn Chatterton, Richie Koller
Awards and honorsAlex Award (2005), Book Sense Book of the Year (2005.6 | Adult Nonfiction Winner, 2005), Reading Across Rhode Island (2006)
EpigraphLife's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right wo... (show all)
DedicationFor Amy, the answer to my life's research For Nate, already a seeker
First wordsBill Nagle's life changed the day a fisherman sat beside him in a ramshackle bar and told him about a mystery he had found lying at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
Book description

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0345482476, Mass Market Paperback)

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.

(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:52 -0400)

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