The Bathysphere Book
“Hypnotic . . . Beautifully written and beautifully made.”
—W. M. Akers, The New York Times Book Review
“A weird and often beautiful fusion of science writing, history and poetry that explores our own relationship with the unknown.” —Edward Posnett, The Guardian
“Mesmerizing . . . Original and often profound, [The Bathysphere Book] is a moving testament to the wonders of exploration.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Imbued with the adventurous spirit of science and exploration . . . [The Bathysphere Book is] an enchanting cabinet of curiosities.” —Kirkus
A wide ranging, philosophical, and sensual account of early deep sea exploration and its afterlives.
“Brad Fox knows that the descent into the deep meant a sea-change not just in science, but in aesthetics, philosophy, the sense of what it is to be human. All have been changed, become rich and strange, as this rich, strange book shows so beautifully.”
CHINA MIÉVILLE
“The Bathysphere Book is wonderful, in the literal sense: filled with wonder. Brad Fox illuminates the extraordinary discoveries of the ocean depths, to be sure, but also of the scientists and artists who first explored them, less than a century ago. To read this glorious and beautifully illustrated account—relayed with what its protagonist William Beebe called ‘the oblique glance’, the wisdom that everything is connected—is to feel again a child’s awed delight at human ingenuity, and at our planet.”
CLAIRE MESSUD
“Brad Fox has created a brilliant work of literary art—at once fiction and nonfiction, history and science, poetry and analysis, almanac and séance, wonder-cabinet and hallucinogen. The vigor, pluck, and compression of his language turn a linear chronicle into a time-bending, gem-laden constellation, with surprising flashes of wit, gossip, and melodrama.”
WAYNE KOESTENBAUM
“What is this sublime, remarkable book? It’s a black unreadable eye sliding past a submarine window, it’s a color on an alien spectrum, it’s a fish made of filaments and lit by its own light. I don’t know what it is, I only know that it’s luminous.”
SHELLEY JACKSON
Read excerpts in Smithsonian Magazine, Orion, Hakai, and Lit Hub.
Order the book here.
From the publisher:
In the summer of 1930, aboard a ship floating near the Atlantic island of Nonsuch, marine biologist Gloria Hollister sat on a crate, writing furiously in a notebook with a telephone receiver pressed to her ear. The phone line was attached to a steel cable that plunged 3,000 feet into the sea. There, suspended by the cable, dangled a four-and-a-half-foot steel ball called the bathysphere. Crumpled inside, gazing through three-inch quartz windows at the undersea world, was Hollister’s colleague William Beebe. He called up to her, describing previously unseen creatures, explosions of bioluminescence, and strange effects of light and color. From this momentous first encounter with the unknown depths, the book widens its scope to explore a transforming and deeply paradoxical America, as the first great skyscrapers rose above New York City and the Great Plains baked to dust.
In prose that is magical, atmospheric, and entirely engrossing, Brad Fox dramatizes new visions of our planetary home, delighting in tales of the colorful characters who surrounded, supported, and participated in the dives–from groundbreaking scientists and gallivanting adventurers to eugenicist billionaires.
The Bathysphere Book is a hypnotic assemblage of brief chapters along with over fifty full-color images, records from the original bathysphere logbooks, and the moving story of surreptitious romance between Beebe and Hollister that anchors the exploration.
Brad Fox blurs the line between poetry and research, unearthing and rendering a visionary meeting with the unknown.
PRESS
"Deep-Sea Creatures of Bittersweet Orange and Metallic Opaline Green” — review by W.M. Akers for The New York Times Book Review
“Mysteries of the Deep,” review by Edward Posnett forThe Guardian
“Why the Ocean’s Depths Fascinate Us — and What We Find Within Them” — review by Carl Hoffman for The Washington Post
“The Descent of William Beebe,” review by Benjamin Shull for The Wall Street Journal
“A Blakean Heaven of Hell: Fish with Colored Lanterns and Teeth Like Primeval Beasts” — review by Philip Hoare for The Spectator
“Into the Deep” — review by George Bass for New Scientist
“An Enchanting Cabinet of Curiosities” — review in Kirkus
Starred review in Publishers Weekly
“Diving the Deep Ocean and Making Unexpected Connections: an Interview with Brad Fox” — Lorraine Boissoneault for Hypertext Magazine
“Inside the First Deep-See Dive in History” — excerpt in Smithsonian Magazine
“Revisiting the History of One Scientist’s Journeys Deep into the Ocean” — interview and article by Tobias Carroll for Inside Hook
“A Conversation with Ayana V. Jackson and Brad Fox” — mutual interview for Bomb
"Into Unknown Depths: Reports from the First Ever Voyage to the Deep Ocean” — excerpt in Orion
“‘A Solid Blue-Black World’: What William Beebe Found at the Bottom of the Ocean” — excerpt in Lit Hub
“Drawing the Deep from a Seat on the Shore” — excerpt in Hakai Magazine
“Brad Fox on the Inspiration behind The Bathysphere Book” — for Waterstones
“Consider Every Drop: Manifestos for Saving Rivers, Lakes, and Oceans” — a three-book review by Caspar Henderson for The Financial Times
“Diving into the Bathysphere” — interview for the CUNY Graduate Center
“Nine New Books We Recommend” — Editors’ Choice list at The New York Times Book Review
“Brad Fox, The Bathysphere Book” — podcast interview on Across the Pond
“The Curious Naturalist Who Plumbed the Ocean Depths” — featured in podcast episode on Beebe, for the series Constant Wonder.