The Human, the Orchid, and the Octopus: Exploring and Conserving Our Natural World [Audiobook, MP3 Audio, Unabridged] [Audio CD]

Jacques Cousteau (Author), Susan Schiefelbein (Author), Stephen Hoye (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 28, 2008

Part adventure story, part manifesto, this is legendary ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau's passionate plea for sustaining life on earth. Explorer, diving pioneer, filmmaker, inventor, and activist, Jacques Cousteau was blessed from his childhood with boundless curiosity about the natural world. As the leader of fascinating, often dangerous expeditions all over the planet, he discovered firsthand the complexity and beauty of life on earth and undersea-and watched the toll taken by human activity in the twentieth century.In his magnificent last book, available for the first time in the United States, Cousteau describes his deeply informed philosophy about protecting our world for future generations. Weaving gripping stories of his adventures throughout, he and coauthor Susan Schiefelbein address the risks we take with human health, the overfishing and sacking of the world's oceans, the hazards of nuclear proliferation, and the environmental responsibility of scientists, politicians, and people of faith. Written over the last ten years of his life with frequent collaborator Schiefelbein, who also introduces the text and provides an update on environmental developments in the decade since Cousteau's death, this prescient, clear-sighted book is a remarkable testament to the life and work of one of our greatest modern adventurers.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The late Cousteau (1910–1997) is still offering remarkable tales of nature and the sea alongside coauthor Schiefelbein. Stephen Hoye delivers a solid reading complete with an astounding Cousteau impersonation that will have listeners questioning just who they are listening to during the introduction. Hoye transports the audience around the globe and under the sea, capturing the tense incidents throughout the tale in a believable manner. Though most of the tale is told from Schiefelbein's perspective, Hoye manages to capture the spirit of Cousteau without always resorting to the impersonation. His reading is underplayed and all the more realistic because of it. As Cousteau would have demanded, the conservation information included becomes the star of the show, and the story is a medium to spread the word about Mother Earth. A Bloomsbury hardcover (Reviews, Aug. 6, 2007). (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Audio CD edition.

From Booklist

Believing that "people will protect what they love," pioneering marine explorer and filmmaker Jacques Cousteau (1910–97) set out to make humankind fall in love with the sea, the crucible of life. A man of sangfroid, conviction, courage, ingenuity, and perception, Cousteau not only was the preeminent guide to the surpassing beauty and mystery of the deep but also became a tireless defender of the watery realm. With the help of Schiefelbein, who wrote the narration for a number of his award-winning documentaries, Cousteau completed this defining and superlative chronicle the year before his death, and although it has taken a decade for it to reach America, it is fresh and stinging, replete with an anchoring foreword by Bill McKibben and Schiefelbein's vivid introduction and informative epilogue. Cousteau seamlessly splices amazing tales of exploring undersea caves, encountering sharks, and surviving an Antarctic blizzard with bracing eyewitness accounts of the shockingly rapid and potentially catastrophic destruction of marine life. Indelible descriptions of the glory of the undersea world are matched by prescient observations and arresting analysis of humankind's paradoxical approach to risk, the roles religion and science play in defining our perception of nature, and the "moral quandaries" attendant on technology, especially nuclear weapons. Cousteau's electrifying, many-faceted masterwork at once celebrates "life's miracles " and warns us that unless we stop ransacking "nature's irreplaceables," we may go the way of the dinosaurs. Seaman, Donna --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Tantor Media; Unabridged,MP3 - Unabridged CD edition (January 28, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400156084
• ISBN-13: 978-1400156085
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,362,219 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Saccage of our living resources, January 12, 2008

By 

Harry Helmen (Ruckersville, Virginia USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Human, the Orchid, and the Octopus: Exploring and Conserving Our Natural World (Hardcover)

Again and again the worlds most brilliant scientist are telling us that we are rapidly depleting the natural world that sustains us.
Cousteau explains it again a lyrical way that only he can.
If you loved Jacques Cousteau in the '70's, you will realize what a real super hero he was after you read this book!
Well written, easy and fun to read. A facinating journey with a remarkable man.
Saccage is Cousteau's term for ransacking natural resources. He believed that people would protect that which they loved, with his films he tried to show us the beauty of his undersea world, his book gives us an important lesson in conservation of the ocean, its creatures and the planet.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Masterful!, January 3, 2008

By 

Jim Thornton (Maine) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Human, the Orchid, and the Octopus: Exploring and Conserving Our Natural World (Hardcover)

This latest Cousteau/Schiefelbein book is thought-provoking, passionate, and brilliantly written. I loved it! It gives insights and little known facts about Cousteau's pioneer experiences an an oceanographic explorer. It weaves together fascinating stories, discoveries, anecdotes, and masterful writing to make you want more and more. Simply put, this is a must-read book for all of us -- especially people interested in conservation and the ocean, climate changes, the modern-day Age of Discovery, unique personalities in our time, and writing so skillful and flavorful that every page is a treat. Read this book! Tell your friends. This book is masterful.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Always passionate, frequently logical, sometimes preachy, October 14, 2007

By 

Larry Ketchersid "author of Software by the K... (Texas) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Human, the Orchid, and the Octopus: Exploring and Conserving Our Natural World (Hardcover)

My son is a well-read, well-informed world traveler at sixteen years old. His blank look when I told him I was reading an advanced copy of a new book by Jacques Cousteau is just one of the many reasons I am excited about the long overdue publication of this book. Cousteau died in 1997, and the absence of his influence in the past decade is echoed in my son's generation's lack of recognition. From the foreword by Bill McKibben:

"For those of us who come of age in the 1960s or '70s, the picture of Jacques Cousteau is fixed forever in our minds. A slight but wiry man, yellow tank peeking over his shoulder, falling backward off the stern of the good ship Calypso as he prepared for yet another dive down among the rays or the jellyfish or the sea cows or the parrot fish - down, literally, into his world, "the undersea world of Jacques Cousteau." His voice became just as familiar, with its somehow slightly wistful but still infectious Gallic intonation. "In ze wisdom of ze dolphins lies ze test of human wisdom.""

Always passionate, frequently logical, sometimes preachy, The Human, The Orchid and The Octopus presents Mr. Cousteau's unique perspective on personal exploration, the environment and our power to influence it. It sits well on my bookshelf next to volume 1 of The Ocean World of Jacques Cousteau that my father gave me years ago, a tribute to one of the world's great explorers and visionaries. The influences of Cousteau and his unique perspective on man's effect on the environment are felt in the perceived environmental calamity in my own novel, Dusk Before the Dawn.

The 25-page introductory biography of Cousteau, penned by his writing partner on this effort (and others), Susan Schiefelbein, is a reminder of the many marks Cousteau left behind, in the world of scuba, exploration, conservation and political maneuvering. It puts into perspective the small amount of time that humans (with the exception of noted free divers of the world) have spent exploring the underwater world (only about sixty-five years have passed since Cousteau's first 1943 dive with his aqualung).

The first part of the book depicts Cousteau's drive to explore and his risk taking, his chapters titled "Personal Risk" and "Public Risk". Part autobiography and part philosophy, these pages put forth Cousteau's reason for being: his need to understand, to research, to discover, and when and how he took risks both personally and professionally. He compares those to the risks and lack of communication and consideration companies and governments take when undertaking risks on "behalf of" the public they serve or sell to:

"Those who plan public risks do not say "Follow me." They say "Trust me." Politicians may rarely be in a position to try technologies for themselves. But they are always in a position to demand that risks be full investigated and that the people who face risks be fully informed. Too often decision makers abdicate this fundamental responsibility of risk management. They do not lead us through truly calculated risks for which they have isolated and then eliminated hazards; they instead goad us into a game of Russian roulette, instructing us to pull technical triggers without telling us if there are bullets in the chamber. This is not leadership. This is no democracy. This is technocratic dictatorship; this is market dictatorship."

Ultimately, this book is about conservation and the environment. Based on his years of exploration and hours underwater, no person had more experience in how how changing world has affected the seas and the rest of the earth that Jacques Cousteau. He writes of visiting places where he explored via scuba, then returning many years later to see the coral gone, the sea life receded, the sea floor picked over. In a chapter titles "Saccage" he describes the phenomena:

"Saccage begins where life began: In the nurseries of the sea. Life thrives in three parts of the ocean: the surface waters, penetrated by sunlight, where plant life blooms; the bottom, where organic detritus settles and the area in which these two life-nurturing factors combine, the continental shelf....These waters - just one half of 1 percent of the total ocean space - support 90 percent of all marine life....It is precisely on these coastlines where saccageurs wreck their havoc. Construction companies dredge for sand and gravel, scraping away Posidonia and fish hatchlings, shaving the bottom like a bald man' pate..."

In the subsequent chapter "Catch as catch can", the fishing industries quota and protected waters policies come under Cousteau's logical and emotional scrutiny. He explains who the boundless supply of fish from the oceans is being illogically and wastefully fished out, with the following facts:

* "Fish provides on average only 5 percent of all protein humans consume daily";
* "While it takes only 15 pounds of grass to produce 1 pound of beef, the ocean must supply some 1,000 pounds of plant life to feed all the creatures that will ultimately feed 1 pound of tuna";
* "If we really wanted to feed the world with fish, then why do we throw so much fish away? Officials say that each year fisherman toss some 5 million tons of fish - more than 550 tons an hour - back into the sea to make room on their ships for the catch that will bring them the highest prices";
* "If we really wanted to feed the world with fish, then why do we feed so much fish to our livestock? Pigs and chickens eat more than one third of the world catch";
* "If we really wanted to feed the hungry world with fish, then why have industrialized nations depleted the waters of the hungry world?"
* "Fishing does not, nor has it ever, undergirded the economy."

He provides some recommendations to the failing fisheries strategy towards the end of this chapter.

Cousteau relates his views on nuclear power and his own personal fight against disposal of nuclear waste in the Med in the chapter entitled "The Hot Peace: Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Energy." Cousteau protested against nuclear energy in France with General DeGaulle, and details not only the proliferation of nuclear weapons and nuclear power but also his arguments against their quick, widespread and sometimes secret deployment.

The last two chapters are Cousteau's imagination and plea about life, his summation of what he sees man inflicting on the environment and upon himself; he imagines a hoped for "Life in a Billion Years" and describes his sense of wonder and awe at "The Miracle of Life" in the final chapter.

The book is brought up to date in the Epilogue by Ms. Schiefelbein, cataloging some of the events in the ten years since the books writing (the book was published in France shortly after Cousteau's death).

While the topic of man's impact on the environment is a tired one, Jacques Cousteau's unique place in the history of exploration of the world and the sea makes this treatise on conservation required reading.

This review was originally published on my website, www.duskbeforethedawn.net.