Rating: 
Summary: If you're a diver- you will LOVE this!
Review: As a recreational diver, I found this true story that takes place within the deep diving community absolutely amazing, exciting, and a little scary because of the risks these men take. I bought the audiobook, which is one of the best abridgements I've ever come across (and thankfully, it's long- 6 INCREDIBLE hours of well-written accounts of the adventures of deep divers and why they do what they do. *Also, the reader is one of the best, if not THE best narrator I have ever heard read an audiobook.) It's written so well that you always understand clearly what is going on, and you really come to care about these guys- these divers that need to go beyond the recreational diving limits of 130 feet, risking their lives to do so, and you find yourself envious of their skill and courage to do it. Have you ever wondered what it's REALLY like to go into a recompression chamber? Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be at 240 feet, diving an undiscovered shipwreck?...If you're a diver- YOU'VE GOT TO LISTEN TO/READ THIS BOOK! Take it on your next dive trip.
Rating: 
Summary: The Last Dive
Review: As a person with much in common with several of the divers featured in the book, and having met a few of them (Steve Berman was my cave diving instructor), I was very impressed with the book. The premise of diving the Andrea Doria has been a lifelong desire of mine, ever since watching her sink on the news as a nine year old. I hope to accomplish that next Summer, hopefully from aboard the Seeker. I have had the "bends" myself, although not as bad a case as those described. I was forced to make an emergency ascent from 214 ft, omiting all decompression stops. 13 hrs in the chamber in Gainesville, FL did the trick for me. All of Bernie's descriptions are 100% accurate. My Email add is Dvcaves@aol.com
Rating:
Summary: Captivating Story
Review: Although Chowdhury bases his book around the life story of a father-son diving team and their deaths, he does much more. He manages to chronicle the early days of technical diving in a manner that is accessible and interesting to the nondiver, linking the modern sport with the history of diving.
Some might be put off by some of the technical details about the uses of various gas mixtures, but I think it would be hard for anyone to not be drawn in by the gut-wrenching descriptions of living through decompression sickness ("the bends").
While the descriptions are vivid, the book could have been bettered by the addition of a few maps (the site of "U-Who" is shown on a nautical chart that serves as the endpapers of the book, but a clearer map would have been nice) and the lack of an index was at times irritating.
Rating:
Summary: NEW DIVER LOVES IT
Review: As a new scuba diver I try to gather as much information as possible on diving.This book not only provides horrifying stories but technical history as well.It is right up my alley!
Rating: 
Summary: Too Long
Review: This book had the potential for a gripping narrative of a father and son's battle with the depths but fell short of that goal. Choudry practically circumnavigated the globe before he arrived at the topic of the book. After he described in nauseating detail, the Rouse's family background, he went into great depth of the technical aspects of diving. This made parts of the book read like a diving manual. Finally, he proposed a somewhat absurd Freudian type analysis of why some divers go deeper than others. While I found the tales of the dives to Andrea Doria and other wrecks quite fascinating the other topics were just unecessary. Only about two chapters were devoted to the actual accident. The story could have been told in half the pages.
Rating: 
Summary: My first disappointment of 2001
Review: Here is a book that borders upon "unreadable". The topic has the potential to be a great story, but the author continually ventures off onto other avenues, straying from the story line, and filling up pages with technical data that most divers already know and most non-divers wouldn't be interested in. I'd say that there's a 50/50 chance that divers will enjoy this book (but wait for the paperback) and a 0% chance that non-divers will.
Rating:
Summary: GREAT READ FOR DIVERS
Review: I really enjoyed this book. I recently attended Cavern training at Ginnie Springs Florida, which is where alot of this book took place.I think Bernie Chowdhury is a great writer and really knows his subject.I highly recommend this book for divers and non divers alike.
Rating:
Summary: Not At A Hardcover Price!!
Review: The "Last Dive" is really 4 books in one. The first deals with the strange (!) Rouse family, father and son, who die needlessly while exploring a sunken German U Boat off the New Jersey coast. The second and by far the stongest is concerned with serious deepwater adventures to sunken U Boats, underwater caves and the "remains" of well-known wrecks including the "Andrea Doria" and the "Empress of Ireland", in the St. Lawrence River. In this portion, "LD" is every bit as fascinating as "Into Thin Air" or "The Perfect Storm" and the book soars. The third part tells us of current trends and personalities in the diving world and the final part is about the technical aspects of diving: diferent equipment, various underwater gasses (oxygen, nitrogen etc.) The end result is an often repetitive hodge podge of a story that ultimately leads the reader nowhere.Harper Collins, the publisher, obviously declined to invest in any editing at all. "FD" is also FAR too long, perhaps because the author was "filling up" pages to justify a hradcover price. Too bad, because the core of a superior tale was there, but no one brought it to fruition. The final 50 pages were torture as this reader waited for the author to wrap up. I suspect Mr. Chowdhury is far more effective at shorter, more focussed magazine articles than the longer fare of a novel. Add 2 stars if "LD" is re-edited and shaped up. Add 3 more stars if you are a hardcore dive fanatic-you won't care about the shortcomings. The rest of the world is forewarned- especially at hardcover prices. Oh for what could have been. A final pont: As with so many other books, MAPS(!) of the dive locations would have helped enormously.
Rating:
Summary: Extremely well-written story, but the 'tragedy' doesn't play
Review: I am a technical diver with some wreck experience, although I do not possess the advanced training (Full Cave, Deep Air, etc.) of either the author or the father-and-son team who perished, the Rousses. I found Bernie Chowdhury's "The Last Dive" to be an exciting, well-told account of a very unfortunate accident, but I must respectfully say that the two divers featured in the title did not earn my sympathy.I live in Alaska, and every year men and women die in this state pursuing activities that are not unduly dangerous--hiking, skiing, snowmobiling, hunting, flying, and the like. Sometimes the accidents are the result of poor planning, inadequate equipment, and a failure to grant nature the respect it demands. But sometimes people die when it seems they did everything right, the victims of plain bad luck. Chris and Chrissy Rouse fall into both categories.In the end, I give Mr. Chowdhury high marks for a fine job of telling the story of his two friends. The many background details on diving were fascinating and accurate, and the author's re-creation of the Rousses' last dive on the U-boat had me on the edge of my seat. But if there's a lesson here, it's that technical diving does not lend itself to people with Chris and Chrissy's competitive personalities and careless attitudes.
Rating:
Summary: Too wordy
Review: I felt the story could have been told in half the time. A little too overwritten.
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