Trapped Under the Sea
One Engineering Marvel, Five Men, and a Disaster Ten Miles into the Darkness
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Trapped Under the Sea
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Narrated by:
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David H. Lawrence XVII
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Written by:
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Neil Swidey
About this listen
The harrowing story of five men who were sent into a dark, airless, miles-long tunnel, hundreds of feet below the ocean, to do a nearly impossible job - with deadly results.
A quarter-century ago, Boston had the dirtiest harbor in America. The city had been dumping sewage into it for generations, coating the seafloor with a layer of “black mayonnaise.” Fisheries collapsed, wildlife fled, and locals referred to floating tampon applicators as “beach whistles.”
In the 1990s, work began on a state-of-the-art treatment plant and a 10-mile-long tunnel - its endpoint stretching farther from civilization than the earth’s deepest ocean trench - to carry waste out of the harbor. With this impressive feat of engineering, Boston was poised to show the country how to rebound from environmental ruin. But when bad decisions and clashing corporations endangered the project, a team of commercial divers was sent on a perilous mission to rescue the stymied cleanup effort. Five divers went in; not all of them came out alive.
Drawing on hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents collected over five years of reporting, award-winning writer Neil Swidey takes us deep into the lives of the divers, engineers, politicians, lawyers, and investigators involved in the tragedy and its aftermath, creating a taut, action-packed narrative. The climax comes just after the hard-partying DJ Gillis and his friend Billy Juse trade assignments as they head into the tunnel, sentencing one of them to death.
An intimate portrait of the wreckage left in the wake of lives lost, the audiobook - which Dennis Lehane calls "extraordinary" and compares with The Perfect Storm - is also a morality tale. What is the true cost of these large-scale construction projects, as designers and builders, emboldened by new technology and pressured to address a growing population’s rapacious needs, push the limits of the possible? This is a story about human risk - how it is calculated, discounted, and transferred - and the institutional failures that can lead to catastrophe.
Suspenseful yet humane, Trapped Under the Sea reminds us that behind every bridge, tower, and tunnel - behind the infrastructure that makes modern life possible - lies unsung bravery and extraordinary sacrifice.
©2014 Neil Swidey (P)2014 Random House AudioWhat the critics say
"A harrowing account of how commercial divers risk their lives to improve ours. After reading Neil Swidey’s Trapped Under the Sea, you will never look at a bridge or tunnel in the same way."
—Men's Journal
"Neil Swidey's detail-rich account of this unlikely disaster is a stirring tribute to the men, how they lived, and how they died."
—Mother Jones
" Trapped Under the Sea is extraordinary. It bears comparison with The Perfect Storm in its brilliant evocation of everyday, working class men thrust into a harrowing, at times heroic confrontation with death and disaster."
— Dennis Lehane, author of Live By Night and Shutter Island
"This book will take you on a journey into a fascinating but little-known world—it’s the anatomy of a tragedy, a dramatic tale with a cast of vividly drawn characters, superbly written and researched."
— Jonathan Harr, author of A Civil Action and The Lost Painting
" Trapped Under the Sea is a heartbreaking tale of real-life bravery, real-life bungling, and real-life tragedy. Neil Swidey is a terrific storyteller."
— Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe
"Thrilling and beautifully told, Trapped Under the Sea delivers us into a dangerous and mysterious world, a place that speaks to our darkest fears and where heroes work, as Swidey so masterfully shows us, just beneath the surface of our everyday lives."
— Robert Kurson, author of Shadow Divers
"A fascinating, sympathetic, and suspenseful look at a doomed, high-risk engineering job, the working class men who dared to undertake it, and its ripple effect on the survivors. Claustrophobic and compelling."
— Chuck Hogan, author of Devils in Exile and The Town
"A marvel of masterful reporting and suspenseful writing. Neil Swidey has delivered a gripping, action-filled account of the human costs deep inside a feat of modern engineering. He has a remarkable knack for bringing to life indelible characters and making readers hold our breath as these brave men enter the claustrophobic world of their undersea lives."
— Mitchell Zuckoff, author of Frozen in Time and Lost in Shangri-La
" Trapped Under the Sea offers vital insights into how organizations work—or fail to work—and how very smart people can make very bad decisions. Neil Swidey’s riveting account of the Deer Island disaster should be essential reading for anyone in a position of leadership. I couldn’t put it down."
— Amy Edmondson, Harvard Business School Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management and author of Teaming
What listeners say about Trapped Under the Sea
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Frances Farmer
- 2024-06-23
Skip this one
The research and reportage aspects are good. But. The elements of narrative are poor. There are places in the text where Swidey ranges far off topic and doesn’t quite close the circle with relevance. Worst of all, however, the contrived dialogue is mostly just bad. Where Swidey does nail it—the technical description and explanation of difficult engineering—redeems the book substantially.
The performance (sorry, David Lawrence XVIi) is mediocre — nice voice, but cadence strident and delivery of dialogue causes listener cringe.
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