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Diving into Darkness: A True Story of Death and Survival
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Author : Phillip Finch
Binding : Hardcover
EAN : 9780312383947
ISBN : 0312383940
Label : St. Martin's Press
Manufacturer : St. Martin's Press
Number of pages : 320
Publication date : 2008-09-30
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
Release date : 2008-09-30
Title : Diving into Darkness: A True Story of Death and Survival
Languages : Array
Number of items : 1
Studio : St. Martin's Press
RRP: $25.95 This item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery
You save: $8.82 (34 %)
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Average customer rating:
Author : Phillip Finch
Binding : Hardcover
EAN : 9780312383947
ISBN : 0312383940
Label : St. Martin's Press
Manufacturer : St. Martin's Press
Number of pages : 320
Publication date : 2008-09-30
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
Release date : 2008-09-30
Title : Diving into Darkness: A True Story of Death and Survival
Languages : Array
Number of items : 1
Studio : St. Martin's Press
Editorial reviews
Product DescriptionOn New Year's Day, 2005, David Shaw traveled halfway around the world on a journey that took him to a steep crater in the Kalahari Desert of South Africa, a site known as Bushman's Hole. His destination was nearly 900 feet below the surface.
On January 8th he descended into the water. About fifteen feet below the surface was a fissure in the bottom of the basin, barely wide enough to admit him. He slipped through the opening and disappeared from sight, leaving behind the world of light and life.
Then, a second diver descended through the same crack in the stone. This was Don Shirley, Shaw's friend, and one of the few people in the world qualified to follow where Shaw was about to go. In the community of extreme diving, Don Shirley was a master among masters.
Twenty-five minutes later, one of the men was dead. The other was in mortal peril, and would spend the next 10 hours struggling to survive, existing literally from breath to breath.
What happened that day is the stuff of nightmarish drama, but it’s also a compelling human story of friendship, heroism, ambition, and of coming to terms with loss and tragedy.
On January 8th he descended into the water. About fifteen feet below the surface was a fissure in the bottom of the basin, barely wide enough to admit him. He slipped through the opening and disappeared from sight, leaving behind the world of light and life.
Then, a second diver descended through the same crack in the stone. This was Don Shirley, Shaw's friend, and one of the few people in the world qualified to follow where Shaw was about to go. In the community of extreme diving, Don Shirley was a master among masters.
Twenty-five minutes later, one of the men was dead. The other was in mortal peril, and would spend the next 10 hours struggling to survive, existing literally from breath to breath.
What happened that day is the stuff of nightmarish drama, but it’s also a compelling human story of friendship, heroism, ambition, and of coming to terms with loss and tragedy.
Customer reviews
review by: date: 2008-10-20 rating:
An amazing story of pushing the limits and tragedy -- non-fiction at its best!
Diving Into Darkness is an incredible look into the relatively obscure but highly dangerous sport of cave-diving, and those who push it to its limits. Phillip Finch is an enormously gifted non-fiction writer who proves with this book that he has Jon Krakauer's knack for conveying highly technical information to a layperson extremely well, and for highlighting the best and worst of a sport. Diving Into Darkness will do for cave-diving what Into Thin Air did for mountaineering, and once you complete this book you will understand what it takes to dive to 270 meters.
review by: cowcaulk date: 2008-10-10 rating:
Very interesting and engaging
Highly recommended. Very interesting read on pushing diving to the limits. See the video on you tube only after you have read the book and understand what the video shows.
review by: date: 2008-10-09 rating:
The spellbinding story and background of a tragic deep-diving body recovery attempt
Diving into Darkness is the story behind the fatal body recovery attempt conducted by the Australian diver David Shaw at Boesmansgat, or Bushman's Hole, in South Africa in January of 2005. This is a thriller, but one where we know the ending. David Shaw died at the almost incredible depth of around 900 feet while trying to recover the body of Deion Dreyer, a young diver who had perished in the massive sinkhole a decade earlier. The mission, which Shaw attempted with Don Shirley as his primary support diver, is well documented and you can see the video Shaw took during his last dive on YouTube.
Author Phillip Finch neither knew Shaw nor was he part of the well-publicized expedition, but the Kansas-based journalist, who is a cave diver himself, managed to create a spell-binding, riveting account of how David's Shaw's passion for extreme diving led to an almost inevitable conclusion.
Unlike most in the small community of extreme divers, David Shaw did not have thousands of dives and decades of experience under his belt when he attempted the complex recovery at near record depth. He was a commercial pilot with Cathay Pacific Airlines who had started in crop duster and charter planes and then worked his way up to ever more complex machinery. It wasn't until 1999, at age 45, that Shaw took up scuba, but once he did, he progressed to Nitrox, decompression dives, wreck diving, cave diving, trimix and rebreather certifications at near record speed.
Rebreather training got him in contact with Don Shirley, an widely renowned instructor and "rebreather evangelist" in South Africa. The book examines the relationship between the laid back and easy going Shirley and the goal-oriented, methodical and driven Shaw whose experience as an airliner captain allowed him to efficiently absorb vast amounts of technical knowledge and calmly follow complex procedures under the most trying circumstances.
Finch relates Shaw's rapid progression from novice diver to descending to the bottom of Boesmansgat, a sinkhole whose bottom at 900+ feet had caused problems to such diving legends as Sheck Exley and Nuno Gomes. Both had survived their own attempts, but not without problems. And none had gone as deep as David Shaw on a rebreather, a complex and at times finicky apparatus that recycles breathing gasses with the help of sensors, computers, and chemistry. When he finds the body of Deion Dreyer, he attempts a recovery on the spot, but the body is stuck and Shaw decides to return for it on another dive.
The book introduces Shaw's wife of 30 years who accepts her husband's dangerous passions but is not part of it. We also get to know friends and fellow divers, and the parents of the dead diver whose body Shaw wants to recover in what ends up becoming a well publicized media event. Don Shirley takes an increasingly important role and finally a central one when he gets in near fatal trouble himself while working his way up from the depths of the massive sinkhole.
The risks Shaw engaged in were considerable. "A career of 333 dives from the deep end of a swimming pool to an attempted body recovery at the bottom of Bushman's Hole is an arc of almost unimaginable steepness," observes Finch. Yet Shaw clearly knew what he was doing, and Finch chronicles Shaw's path as a methodical, deliberate and eminently competent advance rather than daredevil imprudence.
Finch also relates the somber aftermath in heart-wrenching detail -- Shaw's wife's despair and depression, Don Shirley's slow recovery from a debilitating case of the bends, and finally Shirley's advice to noice divers and the eulogy of David Shaw's daughter, Lisa.
Diving into Darkness is a beautifully crafted book, thrilling to read, and written in an engaging style and pace. -- C. H. Blickenstorfer, [...]
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