“By turns philosophical and elegiac, The Bathysphere Book is an alternative history of Beebe’s deep ocean exploration.” —Rebecca Oliver Kaplan, The Mary Sue

“This book is such a feat . . . With beautiful prose and a restrained voice . . . [Fox] complicates the whole white male explorer narrative while immersing us in a Jules Verne-slash-The Origin of Species exploration. Plus the book is gorgeously illustrated with paintings of the species he discovers on his voyage. I’m still thinking about this book.” —Ricardo Nuila, The Stacks

“By turns philosophical and elegiac, Fox’s history of Beebe’s explorations is a hypnotic ode to the world beneath the waves. This is no straightforward narrative but a book built from scraps that belie its intricate engineering. It is also an exceptionally beautiful object, bursting with full-color illustrations and paintings of the creatures Beebe encountered.” —A Washington Post top 10 best book of 2023

“Hypnotic . . . Beautifully written and beautifully made.” —W. M. Akers, The New York Times Book Review

“one of the most beautiful books-as-objects of the year”—The Globe and Mail

“The fatal implosion of the Titan submersible is a reminder that, for all its beauty, the ocean can be an unforgiving place, one that should be explored with humility. William Beebe held the primordial waters in awe. His reflections from a half-mile down suffuse one of the most fascinating and unusual new books I’ve read in some time.” —Benjamin Shull, The Wall Street Journal

“[The Bathysphere Book] is a weird and often beautiful fusion of science writing, history and poetry that explores our own relationship with the unknown—how we make sense of something fundamentally new with the limited tools at our disposal.”—Edward Posnett, The Guardian

”The Bathysphere Book… holds up a mirror to a pioneering explorer of the deep seas… Fox unspools a quirky, digressive series of meditations on Beebe, his times and ours” —Financial Times

‘Wondrous… Beebe’s descent becomes a Blakean heaven or hell, as the giant eyeball of the bathysphere hangs in the abyss… As Fox dives into Beebe’s biography, the book itself becomes the bathysphere” —Philip Hoare, Spectator

“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 Reviews

“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, author of The Emperor’s Children and A Dream Life

“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, author of The Melancholy of Anatomy and Riddance

“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, author of The City in the City and Perdido Street Station

“Brad Fox has created a brilliant work of literary art—at once almanac and seance, 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, author of Ultramarine and The Cheerful Scapegoat

“A fascinating and enlightening journey into the deepest of waters.” —Tobias Carroll, InsideHook

“The Bathysphere Book is a strange, striking, singular recounting . . . It’s a truly creative, passionate, and inspiring blend of science writing, adventure, historical curiosity, art and poetry that will leave you in love with the Earth’s unknowable depths.” —J. Simpson, Spectrum Culture

“A strange and intoxicating book.” —Duncan Madden, Geographical

“Brad Fox has illuminated something true about nature, the world, philosophy and history.” —Bill Rambo, Winnipeg Free Press

This isn’t a conventional biography — it’s a mosaic of rich snippets, unafraid to consider poetry alongside the flaws of Beebe and his companions. The result is a messy and delightful portrait of a life shaped by fascination with the natural world. — Helen Czerski, Times Literary Supplement

For fans of Undrowned, The Brilliant Abyss, and The Book of Eels. For fans of visually rich nature documentaries: My Octopus Teacher, Planet Earth.

A wide-ranging, philosophical, and sensual account of early deep sea exploration and its afterlives, The Bathysphere Book begins with the first-ever voyage to the deep ocean in 1930 and expands to explore the adventures and entanglements of its all-too-human participants at a time when the world still felt entirely new.

The Bathysphere Book delights in the human drama that surrounds this groundbreaking move into the deep ocean, a story of one visionary encounter with the unknown.