Summer, 1930. Aboard a ship floating near the Atlantic island of Nonsuch, marine biologist Gloria Hollister sat with a telephone receiver pressed to her ear. The phone line was attached to a steel cable that plunged 3,000 feet into the sea. There, suspended by the cable, dangled a four-and-a-half-foot steel ball called the bathysphere. Crumpled inside, gazing through three-inch quartz windows at the undersea world, was Hollister's colleague William Beebe. He called up to her, describing previously unseen creatures, explosions of bioluminescence, and strange effects of light and color. In writing about this first encounter with the unknown depths, Fox dramatizes new visions of our planetary home-- and shares tales of the colorful characters who surrounded, supported, and participated in the dives: groundbreaking scientists, gallivanting adventurers, and eugenicist billionaires. -- adapted from jacket