Why read The Eternal Darkness?

Book cover of The Eternal Darkness: A Personal History of Deep-Sea Exploration

Book description

Until a few decades ago, the ocean depths were almost as mysterious and inaccessible as outer space. Oceans cover two-thirds of the earth's surface with an average depth of more than two miles--yet humans had never ventured more than a few hundred feet below the waves. One of the great…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Eternal Darkness as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Stephen J. Pyne

Author

For a while space and the deep oceans were a matched set of explorations – even Arthur C. Clarke wrote parallel novels about space and sea - then they diverged. What space promised, however, the oceans delivered – new maps of the solid Earth, a new geology, new biotas, and life forms.

No comprehensive survey of all that exploration yet exists. But Robert Ballard’s Eternal Darkness gives access to what happened and some of the critical discoveries, even if it grants attention to the sunken Titanic as well as to black smokers. Deep sea discovery doesn’t have a grand narrative…

From Stephen's list on the history of exploration.