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Displaying records 1 through 10 of 442 |
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Price: $15.95
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Sale: $4.95
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Manufacturer: Vintage
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Number of Items: 1
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Binding: Paperback
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Author: Gary Kinder
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Publisher: Vintage
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Dewey Decimal Number: 910.91631
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Publication Date: 1999-05-11
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Reading Level: 560
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Description: The full horror as the mighty Central American, a ship carrying almost 600 people and a wealth of gold, sank in a "perfect hurricane" in 1857 is brilliantly re-created in the audio version of Ship of Gold. Gary Kinder's book cries out for audio interpretation due to its abundance of dramatic descriptions from that hellish night. "The hoarse screams of 500 men rose as she began a slow watery spin--the water turning faster and faster and faster until the swirling vortex sucked the men into a suffocating darkness with the once majestic steamer." Bruce Davison delivers Kinder's rich, descriptive narrative with appropriate drama and flair. It is truly a delight to hear this incredible story read out loud. The chilling testimonies of passengers and crew are also convincingly re-enacted by Davison, who assumes the voices of frightened young women, exhausted crew men, and the steadfast voice of the brave Captain Herndon as he fights to keep his ship afloat. Davison is rather soft spoken, which makes for a pleasant listening experience, especially because the tapes run for five hours. It really is impossible not to become fully engrossed in this fascinating story of a ship's demise, and the subsequent operation to recover her treasure some 130 years later. (Running time: five hours, four cassettes) --Naomi Gesinger
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Price: $40.00
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Sale: $22.92
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Manufacturer: Running Press
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Number of Items: 1
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Binding: Hardcover
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Author: Robert Ballard
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Publisher: Running Press
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Dewey Decimal Number: 910.91634
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Publication Date: 2008-09-01
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Reading Level: 192
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Description: Dead men tell no tales. Dead ships, however, do. Over seventy years after the great ocean liner sank, marine geologist Robert Ballard discovered the wreck of the Titanic 12,500 feet beneath the surface of the icy North Atlantic. Now Ballard presents the world with an opportunity to live the story of the famous ship through his amazing last great images, before Titanic’s remains are gone forever. This is a story told in rusted, twisted metal and debris, but it is also a human story told in a porcelain doll’s face, an empty shoe, and an abandoned derby hat. Titanic: The Last Great Images maps the wreck of the ship from a variety of perspectives to give a completely new picture of the triumph and tragedy that was Titanic. This illustrated volume—and a National Geographic special—weave the strands of the ocean liner’s story together in renderings done by the ship’s original designers, charts of the debris field, and period illustrations. Robert Ballard provides the clearest, most accurate view of the ship we have ever seen. In crisply detailed underwater photography, disintegrating ruins and shattered pieces reveal pride of workmanship, a rigidly defined class system, and indelible images of terror and courage. This book shows what makes the Titanic worthy of the world’s undying fascination. |
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Price: $14.99
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Sale: $2.00
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Manufacturer: Back Bay Books
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Number of Items: 1
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Binding: Paperback
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Author: Dean King
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Publisher: Back Bay Books
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Dewey Decimal Number: 916.48041
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Publication Date: 2005-04-12
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Reading Level: 384
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Description: Some stories are so enthralling they deserve to be retold generation after generation. The wreck in 1815 of the Connecticut merchant ship, Commerce, and the subsequent ordeal of its crew in the Sahara Desert, is one such story. With Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival, Dean King refreshes the popular nineteenth-century narrative once read and admired by Henry David Thoreau, James Fenimore Cooper, and Abraham Lincoln. King’s version, which actually draws from two separate first person accounts of the Commerce's crew, offers a page-turning blend of science, history, and classic adventure. The book begins with a seeming false start: tracing the lives of two merchants from North Africa, Seid and Sidi Hamet, who lose their fortunes—and almost their lives—when their massive camel caravan arrives at a desiccated oasis. King then jumps to the voyage of the Commerce under Captain Riley and his 11-man crew. After stops in New Orleans and Gibraltar, the ship falls off course en route to the Canary Islands and ultimately wrecks at the infamous Cape Bojador. After the men survive the first predations of the nomads on the shore, they meander along the coast looking for a way inland as their supplies dwindle. They subsist for days by drinking their own urine. Eventually, to their horror, they discover that they have come aground on the edge of the Sahara Desert. They submit themselves, with hopes of getting food and water, as slaves to the Oulad Bou Sbaa. After days of abuse, they are bought by Hamet, who, after his own experiences with his failed caravan (described at the novels opening), sympathizes with the plight of the crew. Together, they set off on a hellish journey across the desert to collect a bounty for Hamet in Swearah. King embellishes this compelling narrative throughout with scientific and historical material explaining the origins of the camel, the market for English and American slaves, and the stages of dehydration. He also humanizes the Sahrawi with background on the tribes and on the lives of Hamet and Seid. This material, doled out in sufficient amounts to enrich the story without derailing it makes Skeletons on the Zahara a perfectly entertaining bit of history that feels like a guilty pleasure. --Patrick O'Kelley
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Price: $14.00
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Sale: $1.50
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Manufacturer: Holt Paperbacks
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Number of Items: 1
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Binding: Paperback
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Author: Walter Lord
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Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
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Dewey Decimal Number: 910.91634
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Publication Date: 2005-01-07
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Reading Level: 208
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Description: James Cameron's 1997 Titanic movie is a smash hit, but Walter Lord's 1955 classic remains in some ways unsurpassed. Lord interviewed scores of Titanic passengers, fashioning a gripping you-are-there account of the ship's sinking that you can read in half the time it takes to see the film. The book boasts many perfect movie moments not found in Cameron's film. When the ship hits the berg, passengers see "tiny splinters of ice in the air, fine as dust, that give off myriads of bright colors whenever caught in the glow of the deck lights." Survivors saw dawn reflected off other icebergs in a rainbow of shades, depending on their angle toward the sun: pink, mauve, white, deep blue--a landscape so eerie, a little boy tells his mom, "Oh, Muddie, look at the beautiful North Pole with no Santa Claus on it." A Titanic funnel falls, almost hitting a lifeboat--and consequently washing it 30 yards away from the wreck, saving all lives aboard. One man calmly rides the vertical boat down as it sinks, steps into the sea, and doesn't even get his head wet while waiting to be successfully rescued. On one side of the boat, almost no males are permitted in the lifeboats; on the other, even a male Pekingese dog gets a seat. Lord includes a crucial, tragically ironic drama Cameron couldn't fit into the film: the failure of the nearby ship Californian to save all those aboard the sinking vessel because distress lights were misread as random flickering and the telegraph was an early wind-up model that no one wound. Lord's account is also smarter about the horrifying class structure of the disaster, which Cameron reduces to hollow Hollywood formula. No children died in the First and Second Class decks; 53 out of 76 children in steerage died. According to the press, which regarded the lower-class passengers as a small loss to society, "The night was a magnificent confirmation of women and children first, yet somehow the loss rate was higher for Third Class children than First Class men." As the ship sank, writes Lord, "the poop deck, normally Third Class space ... was suddenly becoming attractive to all kinds of people." Lord's logic is as cold as the Atlantic, and his bitter wit is quite dry.
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Price: $15.95
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Sale: $7.73
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Manufacturer: Citadel
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Number of Items: 1
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Binding: Paperback
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Author: William Benedetto
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Publisher: Citadel
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Dewey Decimal Number: 623
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Publication Date: 2006-03-01
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Reading Level: 254
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Price: $22.95
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Sale: $11.97
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Manufacturer: Citadel
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Number of Items: 1
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Binding: Hardcover
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Author: Jennifer Hooper McCarty::Tim Foecke
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Publisher: Citadel
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Edition: 1
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Dewey Decimal Number: 363.123091631
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Publication Date: 2008-03-01
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Reading Level: 320
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Description: On the starry night of April 14, 1912, at the dawn of a century charged with human ingenuity and hope, the largest and most advanced passenger ship in the world struck an iceberg and sank to the bottom of the frigid North Atlantic. In the decades that followed, despite numerous official inquiries and the eventual discovery of the wreck itself, key questions have gone unanswered: Why did the double-bottomed, 46,000-ton RMS Titanic, built above and beyond the most exacting specifications, sink in less than three hours? Was the iceberg alone responsible for the tragedy? Or did other factors contribute to the collision's deadly toll? A conclusive explanation has not been given--until now. With the same methodology used by forensic scientists in crime-scene investigations, researchers Jennifer Hooper McCarty and Tim Foecke applied new tools to the century-old mystery. By analyzing step by step how the ship was designed and constructed, what vulnerabilities were overlooked, and how this marvel of modern engineering may have been a disaster waiting to happen, they build a compelling new scenario. We are vividly taken into a bygone era, when luxury ocean travel and ruthless business competition fueled ever mightier ship construction projects built by Belfast shipyard workers, some mere children, laboring in unsafe, exhausting conditions. With Britain, the shipbuilders, and an entire industry caught up in a mad dash to build the greatest vessel ever, shocking lapses went unnoticed. Using modern microscopic techniques, the authors reveal those failures and show how they doomed the lives of at least 1,500 of the Titanic's passengers and crew. Grippingly written, What Really Sank the Titanic is illustrated with fascinating period photographs and modern scientific evidence. It includes little-known Titanic facts and lore, colorful portraits of the ship's designers, builders, and crew, eyewitness accounts, and a dramatic timeline of the ship's last hours. In an age when forensics can catch killers, this book does what no other book has before: fingers the culprit in one of the greatest tragedies ever.
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Price: $9.95
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Sale: $3.99
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Manufacturer: Dover Publications
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Number of Items: 1
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Binding: Paperback
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Publisher: Dover Publications
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Dewey Decimal Number: 910.091634
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Publication Date: 1960-06-01
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Reading Level: 320
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Description: This invaluable book collects some of the first-published first-person accounts of the tragedy, described in old-fashioned prose and enhanced by photographs and illustrations redolent of Edwardian society, with captions such as "Ladies and gentlemen in riding habit exercised on mechanical horses and camels in the ship's gymnasium." Some of the social attitudes of the day are preserved to often startling effect: the habits of obedience of "the Teutonic race" are repeatedly praised, and one brave Titanic officer used what the book's introduction terms "the strange ethical algebra which decided that one female, travelling first class, deserved life some six times as much as one male, travelling third class." Yet it's just such period detail that makes this book so compelling--not to mention the vivid sense that the passengers just didn't get it, even while disaster was upon them. "To illustrate further how little danger was apprehended," writes survivor Lawrence Beesley, "when it was discovered ... that the forward lower deck was covered with small ice, snowballing matches were arranged for the following morning.... The cries of drowning people after the Titanic gave the final plunge were a thunderbolt to us."
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Price: $24.95
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Sale: $11.48
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Manufacturer: Algonquin Books
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Number of Items: 1
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Binding: Hardcover
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Author: Joan Druett
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Publisher: Algonquin Books
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Dewey Decimal Number: 919.399
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Publication Date: 2007-05-17
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Reading Level: 284
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Description: Auckland Island is a godforsaken place in the middle of the Southern Ocean, 285 miles south of New Zealand. With year-round freezing rain and howling winds, it is one of the most forbidding places in the world. To be shipwrecked there means almost certain death.
In 1864 Captain Thomas Musgrave and his crew of four aboard the schooner Grafton wreck on the southern end of the island. Utterly alone in a dense coastal forest, plagued by stinging blowflies and relentless rain, Captain Musgrave—rather than succumb to this dismal fate—inspires his men to take action. With barely more than their bare hands, they build a cabin and, remarkably, a forge, where they manufacture their tools. Under Musgrave's leadership, they band together and remain civilized through even the darkest and most terrifying days.
Incredibly, at the same time on the opposite end of the island—twenty miles of impassable cliffs and chasms away—the Invercauld wrecks during a horrible storm. Nineteen men stagger ashore. Unlike Captain Musgrave, the captain of the Invercauld falls apart given the same dismal circumstances. His men fight and split up; some die of starvation, others turn to cannibalism. Only three survive. Musgrave and all of his men not only endure for nearly two years, they also plan their own astonishing escape, setting off on one of the most courageous sea voyages in history.
Using the survivors' journals and historical records, award-winning maritime historian Joan Druett brings this extraordinary untold story to life, a story about leadership and the fine line between order and chaos.
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Price: $15.00
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Sale: $2.28
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Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
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Number of Items: 1
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Binding: Paperback
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Author: Nathaniel Philbrick
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Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
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Dewey Decimal Number: 910.9164
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Publication Date: 2001-05-01
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Reading Level: 320
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Description: The appeal of Dava Sobel's Longitude was, in part, that it illuminated a little-known piece of history through a series of captivating incidents and engaging personalities. Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea is certainly cast from the same mold, examining the 19th-century Pacific whaling industry through the arc of the sinking of the whaleship Essex by a boisterous sperm whale. The story that inspired Herman Melville's classic Moby-Dick has a lot going for it--derring-do, cannibalism, rescue--and Philbrick proves an amiable and well-informed narrator, providing both context and detail. We learn about the importance and mechanics of blubber production--a vital source of oil--and we get the nuts and bolts of harpooning and life aboard whalers. We are spared neither the nitty-gritty of open boats nor the sucking of human bones dry. By sticking to the tried and tested Longitude formula, Philbrick has missed a slight trick or two. The epicenter of the whaling industry was Nantucket, a small island off Cape Cod; most of the whales were in the Pacific, necessitating a huge journey around the southernmost tip of South America. We never learn why no one ever tried to create an alternative whaling capital somewhere nearer. Similarly, Philbrick tells us that the story of the Essex was well known to Americans for decades, but he never explores how such legends fade from our consciousness. Philbrick would no doubt reply that such questions were beyond his remit, and you can't exactly accuse him of skimping on his research. By any standard, 50 pages of footnotes impress, though he wears his learning lightly. He doesn't get bogged down in turgid detail, and his narrative rattles along at a nice pace. When the storyline is as good as this, you can't really ask for more. --John Crace, Amazon.co.uk
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Price: $15.00
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Sale: $5.95
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Manufacturer: Atria
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Number of Items: 1
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Binding: Paperback
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Author: Kevin F. McMurray
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Publisher: Atria
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Dewey Decimal Number: 797
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Publication Date: 2002-06-25
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Reading Level: 320
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Description: On a foggy July evening in 1956, the Italian cruise liner Andrea Doria, bound for New York, was struck broadside by another vessel. In eleven hours, she would sink nearly 250 feet to the murky Atlantic Ocean floor. Thanks to a daring rescue operation, only 51 of more than 1,700 people died in the tragedy. But the Andrea Doria is still taking lives. Considered the Mt. Everest of diving, the Andrea Doria is the ultimate deepwater wreck challenge. Over the years, a small but fanatical group of extreme scuba divers have investigated the Andrea Doria, pushing themselves to the very limits of human endurance to explore her -- and not all have returned. Diver Kevin McMurray takes you inside this elite club with a hard, honest look at those who go deeper, farther, and closer to the edge than others would ever dream. Deep Descent is the riveting true story of the human spirit overcoming human frailty and of fearsome, mortal risks traded for a hard-core adrenaline rush. Chronicling these adventures in his page-turning narrative and in dozens of dramatic photos, McMurray draws us deeper into the cold heart of the unforgiving sea, giving us a powerful vision of a place to which few will ever have the skills -- or the courage -- to go.
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Displaying records 1 through 10 of 442
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