Brad Matsen: 5 books

An unprecedented and masterfully told biography of Jacques Cousteau that reveals for the first time the fascinating and compelling individual behind this famous television personality.   Inventor of the aqualung and fearless scuba diver, Jacques Cousteau opened up the ocean to a mass audience for...

In Descent: The Heroic Discovery of the Abyss, Brad Matsen brings to vivid life the famous deep-sea expeditions of Otis Barton and William Beebe. Beebe was a very well-connected and internationally acclaimed naturalist, with the power to generate media attention. Barton was an engineer and heir to...

The first full account of the most tragic oil rig disaster in history, the human story behind it, and the true nature of its legacy.   July 6, 1988, began as a normal day on Piper Alpha, the biggest offshore oil rig on the North Sea. But just after 10:00 p.m., a series of explosions rocked the platform,...

After rewriting history with their discovery of a Nazi U-boat off the coast of New Jersey, legendary divers John Chatterton and Richie Kohler decided to investigate the great enduring mystery of history's most notorious shipwreck: Why did Titanic sink as quickly as it did? To answer the question,...

This new edition contains new stories and updates from the super heated days when fishing fleets turned king crab into fortunes, to the annual circus of Bristol Bay's monster salmon runs, to the bucolic life of the open ocean trawler, the true stories in Fishing Up North: Stories of Luck and Loss...