With Down Time, the Kittrells have achieved something big and wonderful. Divers
often struggle to put their experiences into words, but here are the voices of
well-known writers who have ventured into the underwater world. They turn diving
into a journey of the mind and spirit. This is a diverse, colorful, and
ultimately transformative selection of writings on our complex relationship with
the sea. --Jean-Michel Cousteau Dave Barry does battle with a lobster...James
Jones is awestruck in a coral cathedral...Robert Stone faces down fear with his
air running out...Clare Boothe Luce discovers the reef's true treasure...Tim
Cahill tracks the zombie of the deep... Dive with some of the best-selling
authors of all time. Winners of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.
Novelists and journalists. Scientists and adventurers. Playwrights, poets and
moviemakers. In thirty-five passages spanning seven decades, they share the
frights and fantasies, the mystery and the magic beneath the waves. From the
lagoon on Rangiroa to the reefs of the Red Sea...from deep within caves to under
the ice...from the lethal silliness of nitrogen narcosis to the elation of
soaring over unfathomable depths...every selection, like every dive, is a unique
experience. Together, they offer an avid exploration and a thoughtful
celebration of a world that only divers know.