Book Review: Shadow Divers

Thanks to the recommendation of guys on TWiT, I read Robert Kurson's Shadow Divers during my vacation, and it's a totally engrossing read.

Shadow Divers tells the story of John Chatterton and Richard Kohler, two hardcore divers, who were once rivals but developed a bond after the discovery of an unidentified U-boat sunken off the coast of New Jersey. The sub was located deep in treacherous waters, and three divers perished in the exploration of the wreck.




Kurson writes in fashion that explains in great detail the experience that is deep sea diving. I highly recommend this book.

On a side note, I found a brief section on John Chatterton's "indisputable truths" with respect to life that I thought were very insightful and worth sharing:

• If an undertaking was easy, someone else already would have done it.
  
• If you follow in another's footsteps, you miss the problems really worth solving.
  
• Excellence is born of preparation, dedication, focus and tenacity; compromise on any of these and you become average.
  
• Every so often, life presents a great moment of decision, an intersection at which a man must decide to stop or go; a person lives with these decisions forever.
  
• Examine everything; not all is as it seems or as people tell you.
  
• It is easiest to live with a decision if it is based on an earnest sense of right and wrong.
  
• The guy who gets killed is often the guy who got nervous. The guy who doesn't care anymore, who has said "I'm already dead - the fact that I live or die is irrelevant and the only thing that matters is the accounting I give of myself," is the most formidable force in the world.
  
• The worst possible decision is to give up.