Jacques Cousteau (A & E Biographies (Lerner Hardcover))

Rating:
Summary: Lesley A. DuTemple, Biography: Jacques Cousteau
Review: This biography of the French oceanographer is written for juveniles and has good pictures. Endnotes, found at pp. 106-07, refer to pages in the text (a fact not noted in the volume), while Madsen's good, but dated, biography appears here, but not in the bibliography. More problematic is the bibliography's use of websites. Unlike books, these are subject to change, and change they have. The site given for a list of Cousteau's videos, www.cousteausociety.org.filmsC.html , no longer exists, and only one video is listed at www.cousteau.org . Similarly, www.dolphinlog.org is now www.cousteaukids.org . At least one of the endnotes, referring to Cousteau weeping when he heard news of the sinking of the Dupleix, gives an incorrect reference in The Silent World (it occurs on p. 34, not p. 31).

DuTemple gives a short treatment of Cousteau's romantic relationship and second family, but avoids any mention of his brother Pierre's collaboration with the Axis during World War II or of Jean-Michael's suit against Jacques over use of the Cousteau Society name. More worrisome in a book for students, the author states, "[i]n September 1939, France and Great Britain declared war on Germany" (at p. 29), adding later, "[t]hen Hitler rolled into Poland" (at p. 30), which indeed many of us thought was the reason for the declaration of war in the first place.

It is also interesting to compare DuTemple's assertion that Cousteau "and a group under his command dove under the ships of the French fleet, placing enough explosives to sink every ship. The fleet could be destroyed if necessary to prevent Hitler from using the ships" (at p. 32) with Axel Madsen's statement that, "Cousteau and the artillery specialists under his command were busy booby-trapping the whole fleet. Against whom they weren't quite sure. But bombs were placed aboard every ship ...." (see p. 36 in Madsen's book; emphasis added).

DuTemple incorrectly states the date of the founding of the Cousteau Society as 1973 rather than 1974. The chart on "The Evolution of Diving Gear" (pp. 34-35) fails to give credit to Otis Barton, who designed the bathysphere in which he and William Beebe plumbed the depths, and does not note that Cousteau actually knew Guy Gilpatrick when he lived at Cap d'Antibes.