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Title details for Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson - Available

Shadow Divers

The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II

by Robert Kurson
Michael Prichard
Audiobook
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New York Times Bestseller 
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.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

    March 5, 2004

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780739349953
      • File size: 452124 KB
      • Duration: 15:41:55

  • Languages

    • English

  • Levels

    • Text Difficulty: 6-12

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Michael Prichard's voice mesmerizes as he conveys the complicated techniques of deep-wreck diving, the grave dangers that confront those who dive, and the toll it takes on their personal lives. This riveting account describes the perseverance of two divers, Kohler and Chatterton, as they struggle to correctly identify a WWII German submarine lying on the ocean floor off the New Jersey coast. As their personal relationship deepens, their search for artifacts yields to determination to identify the submerged vessel and to notify the crew's families in Germany. A bonus to be found on the audio version is Kurson's informative interview with the two divers. L.C. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from March 29, 2004
      This superlative journalistic narrative tells of John Chatterton and Rich Kohler, two deep-sea wreck divers who in 1991 dove to a mysterious wreck lying at the perilous depth of 230 feet, off the coast of New Jersey. Both had a philosophy of excelling and pushing themselves to the limit; both needed all their philosophy and fitness to proceed once they had identified the wreck as a WWII U-boat. As Kurson, a writer for Esquire
      , narrates in this debut, the two divers next undertook a seven-year search for the U-boat's identity inside the wreck, in a multitude of archives and in a host of human memories. Along the way, Chatterton's diving cost him a marriage, and Kohler's love for his German heritage helped turn him into a serious U-boat scholar. The two lost three of their diving companions on the wreck and their mentor, Bill Nagle, to alcoholism. (Chowdhury's The Last Dive
      , from HarperPerennial in 2002, covers two of the divers' deaths.) The successful completion of their quest fills in a gap in WWII history—the fate of the Type IX U-boat U-869. Chatterton and Kohler's success satisfied them and a diminishing handful of U-boat survivors. While Kurson doesn't stint on technical detail, lovers of any sort of adventure tale will certainly absorb the author's excellent characterizations, and particularly his balance in describing the combat arm of the Third Reich. Felicitous cooperation between author and subject rings through every page of this rare insightful action narrative. If the publishers are dreaming of another Perfect Storm
      , they may get their wish. Agent, Heather Schroder
      .7-city author tour; first serial to
      Esquire; rights sold in Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the U.K.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      This epic account of the discovery, by two recreational scuba divers, of a German U-boat more than 200 feet below the Atlantic's surface, off the New Jersey coast, is more than the recounting of an unusual exploit. Blending history, science, and technology, this intellectual odyssey is dappled with the human element, so vital to the tale of sometimes rivals who band together to find answers to questions no one would have imagined asking. There is an ominous tone to this story of discovery and loss, a looming sense of danger. Listeners cannot help but be riveted by actor-director Campbell Scott's clipped, sonorous, authoritative narration, which fits so perfectly with a chronicle set largely in the ocean's depths. M.J.B. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      August 2, 2004
      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. Simultaneous release with the Random House hardcover (Forecasts, Mar. 29).

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Levels

  • Text Difficulty:6-12

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