Jacques Cousteau: The Sea King |  | Author: Brad Matsen
Publisher: Pantheon
List Price: $27.95
Buy New: $13.75
as of 11/21/2009 07:39 CST details
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Seller: the witty scholars
Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 7924
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.4
ISBN: 037542413X
Dewey Decimal Number: 551.46092
EAN: 9780375424137
ASIN: 037542413X
Publication Date: October 20, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Jacques Cousteau opened up the undersea world as no one has done before or since. But not generally know is the fascinating and compelling individual behind the acclaimed television personality.
With the cooperation of many of Jacques Cousteau’s collaborators, friends, and family, Brad Matsen gives us the first full picture of this remarkable life. Here is Cousteau working for the French resistance during World War II (for which he received France’s Croix de Guerre); developing—and risking his life to test—the regulator that made scuba diving possible; running the world’s largest scuba equipment manufacturing firm; becoming a legendary catalyst of the worldwide environmental movement; starring in The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau and in hundreds of documentaries; and publishing more than fifty books. And here is the widowed Cousteau marrying his longtime mistress—forty years his junior and the mother of two of his children—kindling a bitter family feud that continues to this day.
Vividly conveying the people, the adventure, the science, and the lure of the sea that shaped Cousteau’s life, Matsen paints a luminous portrait of a man who profoundly changed the way we view, and treat, our planet.
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| Customer Reviews:
Fascinating, entertaining, filled with revelations October 27, 2009
John Grissim (Sequim, WA USA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
To cut to the chase, Sea King is a wonderful fast-paced, very entertaining read, a lively unauthorized, carefully researched biography of a 20th Century world icon, warts and all, skillfully told by arguably the best author on marine topics writing today (Matsen's two most recent books: Descent and Titanic's Last Secrets, both terrific). With Cousteau, the author had his work cut out. The man was a complex, formidable personality: inventor, self-taught scientist, filmmaker, adventurer, explorer, visionary, charmer, canny marketer, environmentalist, and celebrated world citizen. With his pitch-perfect narrative voice, Matsen delivers in spades, revealing Cousteau was also a bit of a con, self-absorbed, not a little sociopathic, a tireless ladies man (reportedly he slept with 10,000 women), and oh so French. He also had a secret life: a second family with a devoted mistress who bore him children and who following his death, emerged as the controversial controller of the Cousteau estate.
What surprised me is that Cousteau's life story is only now being told-amazing considering Cousteau's decades-long celebrity and profound impact on both scuba diving and the conservation movement. Matsen plunges in with gusto. It's all here: the invention of the double-stage regulator (replete with near fatal experiments), the breakthrough documentary The Silent World, behind-the-scenes tales of the Calypso voyages (groupies and all), the tragic death of Cousteau's son Philippe, Cousteau's quirky successful partnership with media mogul Ted Turner, the meteoric success of the Cousteau Society and its long messy public unraveling.
Great stuff, all of it. Matsen never gets in the way, steering an even-handed course, allowing the darker revelations and less-flattering aspects of the man speak for themselves. A bonus: the book's photos, many provided by family members and never before published, are excellent. Highest recommendation.
John Grissim, author of The Lost Treasure of the Concepcion and Pure Stoke
Amazing that it was written before October 21, 2009
urbaneye
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
An exciting and well written biography of an amazing man. The author tells the story of Cousteau with a nonsensational but highly engaging voice. Although I'm a big fan of all things Cousteau, Matsen reveals many aspects of him I was not even remotely aware of.
One of the remarkable things about the book is that it wasn't written a long time ago - as far as I know this is the only English-language detailed account of Cousteau's life and work: a man that not only revolutionized how we look at and engage with our watery planet, invented Scubadiving - but also had a fascinating (and thoroughly complicated...) personal life. This makes for a real page-turner, and Matsen delivers the goods with style.
I reccomend it to all people who are interested in the oceans, diving - or just want an entertaining read!
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