Word: kurson
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...heroes of Robert Kurson's Shadow Divers (Random House; 375 pages) go to very great lengths, and even greater depths, to do precisely that. Their story began in 1991 when Bill Nagle, captain of a charter boat catering to scuba divers, got wind of an unexplored shipwreck 60 miles off the coast of New Jersey. He quickly rounded up a dirty dozen of recreational divers, including a Vietnam veteran named John Chatterton, and sailed out for a look-see. A quick underwater peek revealed that the wreck was, unbelievably, a World War II--vintage German U-boat, nestled...
...full tanks of air on their backs. Other hazards include the bends--brought on by ascending from the depths too rapidly--unreliable equipment, panicky colleagues grabbing another diver's air supply, collapsing shipwrecks and nitrogen narcosis, a state of mental impairment that afflicts divers below 70 ft. or so. Kurson takes us into the gossipy, cliquey subculture of hard-core wreck divers, men who can come to blows over a chipped teacup from a sunken cruise ship. He also expends a fair amount of ink trying to explain why anybody would risk so much for so little. The answer boils...