Free Trapped Under The Sea: One Engineering Marvel, Five Men, And A Disaster Ten Miles Into The Darkness Ebooks To Download
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 book—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. From the Hardcover edition.
Paperback: 432 pages
Publisher: Broadway Books; 1 edition (February 17, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307886735
ISBN-13: 978-0307886736
Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.5 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (280 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #216,532 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #25 in Books > Engineering & Transportation > Engineering > Marine Engineering #61 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > True Crime > White Collar Crime #62 in Books > Engineering & Transportation > Engineering > Industrial, Manufacturing & Operational Systems > Health & Safety
This book is so expertly researched, impressively detailed, and captivatingly written that it appealed to my logical, ethical and emotional sides. Though I knew absolutely nothing about waste treatment plants, engineering projects or big corporations going into this, I didn't have trouble following because everything was clearly explained.The prologue jumps right to the moment where all hell breaks loose in the underwater tunnel, then the narrative shifts to the Boston Harbor pollution mess, the construction of the waste treatment plant, the major players involved, and the increasingly unnerving setbacks that cropped up while finalizing the tunnel, which leads back to where the prologue left off. The final third of the book recounts the investigation, legal battles, and the struggles of the surviving divers to put the underwater tunnel nightmare behind them.This compelling read reveals the massive amount of planning, money, effort and time involved in huge "engineering marvels," and it exposes the risks that may be taken toward the end of projects where time and money pressures, as well as dangerous complacency, can lead to shortcuts and carelessness. It's heartbreaking and infuriating that completely avoidable deaths occurred during the final stage of the Boston Harbor's waste treatment plant's construction because the people in charge became negligent and rash.This book certainly changed my perception of industrial structures (not only do they cost a lot in terms of money, but also sometimes in terms of lives), and I'll definitely be more apt to stand up for my safety if I've ever asked to do something I have doubts about at work. Highly recommended for anyone interested in history, non-fiction, engineering, or sea related disasters.
Trapped Under the Sea: One Engineering Marvel, Five Men, and a Disaster Ten Miles Into the Darkness Miles on Miles: Interviews and Encounters with Miles Davis (Musicians in Their Own Words) Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World's Greatest Comics ([Marvel comics) Miles and Miles of Reptiles: All About Reptiles (Cat in the Hat's Learning Library) Cryoburn (A Miles Vorkosigan Adventure) (Miles Vorkosigan Adventures) Komarr: A Miles Vorkosigan Adventure (Miles Vorkosigan Adventures) Borders of Infinity: A Miles Vorkosigan Adventure (Miles Vorkosigan Adventures) Ethan of Athos (Miles Vorkosigan Adventures) (The Miles Vorkosigan Adventures) Marvel Heroes Little Golden Book Favorites #1 (Marvel) Ms. Marvel Volume 1: No Normal (Ms. Marvel Graphic Novels) Ms. Marvel Vol. 1: No Normal (Ms. Marvel Series) The Hindenburg Disaster (Black Sheep: Disaster Stories) Eschatology, Messianism, and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Related Literature, V. 1) (Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls & Related Literature) Masters of Disaster: The Ten Commandments of Damage Control Trapped: How the World Rescued 33 Miners from 2,000 Feet Below the Chilean Desert Trapped! A Whale's Rescue Trapped In Ice!: An Amazing True Whaling Adventure We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese Spiral: Trapped in the Forever War We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of the American Women Trapped on Bataan
