Fatal Depth: Deep Sea Diving, China Fever, and the Wreck of the Andrea Doria

Rating:
Summary: An excellent read
Review: This book was hard to put down.

Rating:
Summary: Deep divers will enjoy
Review: This is a very good book dealing with diving on the Andrea Doria. It is a detailed account of two chapters in Deep Descent. I think it is a story that is written well enough that most people will glide past the proofreading errors. Hardcore divers will enjoy the book, but few others.

Rating:
Summary: Sports and Death: Tales of the absurd
Review: When you think about them, all sports can seem absurd....batting a round ball 400 feet, carrying an oval ball 100 yards, climbing the highest peaks on Earth. And yet each sport attracts its own. Each attracts players who embrace a sports peculiarities, intricacies and risks. Players do it for the love of teamwork and competition, for the unique camaraderie spawned in such pursuits, and for the moments of exhilaration, tranquility and statisfaction that come when pushing toward any form of excellence.
In Joe Haberstroh's new book, "Fatal Depth," the sport is scuba diving at its extreme, riskiest level....200 feet below the surface of the cold North Atlantic, where divers scavenge the wreck of the 1950s luxury ocean liner, the Andea Doria, in search of cups, plates and saucers from the ship's china cabinets. Silly as it might seem to others, scuba divers see the Doria and its baubles as the Mount Everest of their sport.
As the title suggests, the book is also about death....the odd circumstances surrounding the deaths of five Doria divers in 1998 and 1999.
One by one, readers get to know and care about each ill-fated diver. Haberstroh uses a gripping narrative style that's sparse, swift and rich with incisive detail. The craftsmanship is particularly visible at the end of each chapter, where the author is both playful and poignant.
The heart of the book, though, belongs to its ultimate survivor, Dan Crowell, skipper of the charter boat that escorted all five divers to the Doria. Crowell is an enigma, but an unrelentingly interesting one.
Unlike many sports-book authors, Haberstroh resists the temptation to romanticize Crowell and his crew of "big-boy" divers.
Unlike many authors examining untimely death, Haberstroh also resists the temptation to blame or scorn either the five divers or the crew that led them to the abyss.
Instead, he leaves it to readers to judge where fault lies....or whether there is fault when dealing with risks of such a sport at its highest, or in this case, deepest level.
It's those murky depths that help make "Fatal Depth" as rare and valuable a find as a first-class saucer from the Doria herself.