Product Description

In the tradition of Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air and Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm comes a true tale of riveting adventure in which two weekend scuba divers risk everything to solve a great historical mystery–and make history themselves.

For John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, deep wreck diving was more than a sport. Testing themselves against treacherous currents, braving depths that induced hallucinatory effects, navigating through wreckage as perilous as a minefield, they pushed themselves to their limits and beyond, brushing against death more than once in the rusting hulks of sunken ships.
But in the fall of 1991, not even these courageous divers were prepared for what they found 230 feet below the surface, in the frigid Atlantic waters sixty miles off the coast of New Jersey: a World War II German U-boat, its ruined interior a macabre wasteland of twisted metal, tangled wires, and human bones–all buried under decades of accumulated sediment.
No identifying marks were visible on the submarine or the few artifacts brought to the surface. No historian, expert, or government had a clue as to which U-boat the men had found. In fact, the official records all agreed that there simply could not be a sunken U-boat and crew at that location.

Over the next six years, an elite team of divers embarked on a quest to solve the mystery. Some of them would not live to see its end. Chatterton and Kohler, at first bitter rivals, would be drawn into a friendship that deepened to an almost mystical sense of brotherhood with each other and with the drowned U-boat sailors–former enemies of their country. As the men’s marriages frayed under the pressure of a shared obsession, their dives grew more daring, and each realized that he was hunting more than the identities of a lost U-boat and its nameless crew.

Author Robert Kurson’s account of this quest is at once thrilling and emotionally complex, and it is written with a vivid sense of what divers actually experience when they meet the dangers of the ocean’s underworld. The story of Shadow Divers often seems too amazing to be true, but it all happened, two hundred thirty feet down, in the deep blue sea.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7238 in Books
• Published on: 2005-05-31
• Released on: 2005-05-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 416 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Kurson's chronicle of an extraordinary deep-sea discovery makes for a captivating audio experience. In 1991, divers John Chatterton and Rich Kohler came across the buried remains of a German submarine just off the coast of New Jersey. Unable to identify the ship and mystified as to its origins, the two men became obsessed with learning where the U-boat came from and what brought it to the bottom of the sea. Although the story's set-up, which comprises most of the first disc, drags, the pace picks up when the partners begin traveling the world, digging up clues. Reader Scott uses character voices but keeps them subdued, even when dealing with the salty language of the seamen. This is a wise move, since there's plenty of drama inherent in the text; lengthy and detailed passages describing deep-water dives, and the horrible things that can go wrong with them, evoke mental pictures that are atmospheric and downright claustrophobic at times. A segment featuring interviews with Chatterton and Kohler rounds out this satisfying audio edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker
Deep-wreck divers are used to operating with almost no headroom and in zero visibility, navigating by touch alone; it is a compliment to be told "When you die, no one will ever find your body." Despite the dangers, wreck divers are typically weekend warriors, men who leave families and jobs behind to test themselves at two hundred feet down. Kurson's exciting account centers on two divers, John Chatterton and Robert Kohler, who in 1991 found an unidentified U-boat embedded in the ocean floor off the coast of New Jersey. The task of identifying it leads them to Germany, Washington, D.C., and the darkest corners of the submarine itself. Some of the most haunting moments occur on land, as when the divers research the lives of the doomed German sailors whose bones they swim among. Once underwater, Kurson's adrenalized prose sweeps you along in a tale of average-guy adventure.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

From Bookmarks Magazine
The “U-Who” and German soldiers’ stories “have settled,” Kurson writes, at the bottom of the sea, “where one uncovers the freeze-frames of final human experience.” Critics compare Shadow Divers, a danger-filled adventure story that blends action, mystery, science, and military history, to Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air and Sebastian Unger’s Perfect Storm. Like these true-adventure authors, Kurson, contributing editor to Esquire, definitely knows how to tell a story (some parts were previously covered in a PBS “Nova” segment). In vivid prose, he writes,+“It is one thing … to slither in near-total darkness through a shipwreck’s twisted, broken mazes, each room a potential trap of swirling silt and collapsing structure. It is another to do so without knowing that someone did it before you and lived.”Chatterton and Kohler both lived, though others died along the way. Kurson brings all the players back to life, recounting their perilous dives, jealousies, and life-threatening dangers with heart-stopping detail. The best parts recreate the lives of the German sailors aboard the “U-Who.” Despite the book’s riveting topic, a few critics complain that Chatterton and Kohler, whom Kurson made into business partners, hyped up their stories. But the most serious issue involves questions about the divers’ ethics and motives, which Kurson doesn’t address. These flaws, however, barely undermine a remarkable story about two men who risked their lives to uncover a lost piece of World War II history.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Amazing Book, Slow Start
Great book, well written with exception to the beginning. The first two chapters were excruciating. The rest of the book was a great and gripping story. A real page turner.

Thrilling
Real life adventure at its thrilling best. This is a true tale of riveting adventure in which two weekend scuba divers risk everything to solve a great historical mystery and make history themselves.

Must read for divers
This is a fantastic book. I have read it several times. I am a dive instructor and have given this book as gifts to students. Everyone has loved it. I have given it over 10 times. One of my favorite gifts to give to my divemaster students. I am buying it again today as a gift for an open water student who got some bonus questions correct. Mike Bannon