'Hypnotic... raises questions of exploration and wonder, of nature and humanity' New York Times Book Review

'Exquisite and shocking... just as any exploration of the deep should be' Helen Scales, author of The Brilliant Abyss

'[A] rich, strange book' China Miéville, author of The City & the City

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11 June, 1930. On a ship floating near the Atlantic island of Nonsuch, a curious steel ball is lowered 3000 feet into the sea. Crumpled up inside, gazing through three-inch thick quartz windows, sits the famed zoologist William Beebe. With uncontrollable excitement, he watches as bizarre, never-before-seen creatures flit out of the inky blackness, illuminated by explosions of bioluminescence. He is the first person to witness this alien world.

Beebe's dives take place against the backdrop of a transforming and paradoxical America, home to ground-breaking scientists, eccentric adventurers, and eugenicist billionaires. Yet under the ocean's crushing pressure, scientific expectations disintegrate; the colour spectrum shatters into new dimensions; outlandish organisms thrive where no one expected them.

The Bathysphere Book blends research, storytelling, and poetic experiments, traveling through entangled histories of scientific discovery into the bottomless magic of the deep unknown.

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'The life work of an explorer-scientist becomes a thing of rich poetry' Helen Gordon, author of Notes from Deep Time
'A breathtaking book, full of suspense, revelation, and beauty' Sy Montgomery, author of The Soul of an Octopus
'An exhilarating read... shiveringly exciting, important, and new' Martin MacInnes, author of In Ascension
'An impressionistic work of art depicting one of the greatest moments of discovery in human history... tantalizing glimpses of deep-sea life' Edith Widder, author of Below the Edge of Darkness: Exploring Light and Life in the Deep Sea
'A genre-deying book about oceans that is imbued with intelligence, curiosity and wonder' Joanna Pocock, author of Surrender
'A brilliant work of literary art... a time-bending, gem-laden constellation' Wayne Koestenbaum, author of Ultramarine

"An alternative history of Beebe's exploration of the deep ocean, a weird and often beautiful fusion of science writing, history and poetry that explores our own relationship with the unknown" - Guardian

"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" - Spectator

"Hypnotic... Beautifully written... raises questions of exploration and wonder, of nature and humanity, and lets readers find answers on their own" - The New York Times

"This is no straightforward narrative but a book built from scraps that belie its intricate engineering. It is also an exceptionally beautiful object" - Washington Post, Books of the Year

"Original and often profound, this 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

"A messy and delightful portrait of a life shaped by fascination with the natural world" - Times Literary Supplement

"Brad Fox's vivid retelling of the voyages of the first deep-sea submersible is full of fascinating technology, novel marine discoveries - and unusual scientists. . . Exquisite" - New Scientist