Customer Reviews

Into the Deep: The Life of Naturalist and Explorer William Beebe

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I'm currently writing an article for Wikipedia about William Beebe, so I'm pretty familiar with him. I recently picked up this book because I was curious what a kids' book about him would be like.

Although this is definitely a book for kids, I was impressed by some of little details that it included. One detail I especially liked is that Beebe's assistants Gloria Hollister and John Tee-Van appear in several of the illustrations of Beebe and his team onboard the ship from which they launched the Bathysphere. John Tee-Van is not actually identified in the book's text, but it's clearly recognizable as him from some of the photographs of him that I've seen, and it's nice that the author of this book thought to include him.

This book's illustration of the Bathysphere surrounded by deep-sea fish in the depths of the ocean is also obviously inspired by Else Bostelmann's 1934 painting of the same thing, which was published in Beebe's National Geographic article where he described his half-mile dive. I'm of two minds about this: one one hand, it's nice to see that Bostelmann's paintings are still an inspiration to modern artists, and it doesn't make a lot of sense to accuse someone of plagiarism from a painting that's over 70 years old. But on the other hand, I can't help but wonder whether the author could have come up with a way of depicting this that isn't so similar to how another artist has depicted it already.

There are also a few factual errors and omissions in this book. The factual errors are nothing major, but I was a little disappointed by some of the information that was left out.

-The "Diving Deeper into the Story" section of the book says that Beebe's first book was published in 1918. That isn't correct: his first book, Two Bird-lovers in Mexico, was published in 1905, and his second, The Bird, its Form and Function was published in 1906. 1918 was when the first volume of his most famous book, A Monograph of the Pheasants, was published. Although this was his most famous book, it wasn't his first.

-The illustration which is inspired by Bostelmann's painting shows light shining out of all three of the Bathysphere's windows. That wouldn't have been possible, because during all of Beebe and Barton's dives in the Bathysphere, they had a steel plug fitted in place of its third window. In fact, their attempt to install the third window is what caused the Bathysphere to leak and fill with pressurized water during one of its test dives, as shown in an earlier illustration. Their failure to make the Bathysphere watertight with the third window installed is why they never used it.

-Describing this failed test dive, the book says "If Will and Otis had been inside, they would have drowned." Actually, they probably wouldn't have had time to drown. When Beebe later described this incident, he pointed out that the extreme pressure of the water would have killed them almost instantly. (Although mentioning that might be a little too scary for a kids' book.)

There are a few other examples of things that aren't really errors per se, but still seem like unfortunate omissions.

-Although the book briefly talks about Beebe's early expeditions, it makes no mention of the most impressive of these, which was an expedition around the world from 1909 to 1911 documenting the world's pheasants. This really should have been mentioned. Other than his Bathysphere dives, this expedition might be Beebe's most famous accomplishment, and the monograph he wrote based on it received the National Academy of Sciences' Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal.

-The book doesn't mention Beebe's theory that the ancestors of birds passed through a four-winged stage in the early evolution of flight, which has been supported by the 2003 discovery of the feathered dinosaur Microraptor gui. Pointing this out is more of a nit-pick than the other criticisms, because Beebe's Tetrapteryx hypothesis also isn't mentioned in Carol Grant Gould's biography of him, which is probably the best book available about Beebe's life. Still, among modern paleontologists this theory is what Beebe is most remembered for, so it's unfortunate that it was left out.

I'm being more critical than necessary about this, because my standard for books written about William Beebe is pretty high. It's still a good book as children's books go, and the illustrations are detailed and well-painted. But if your kids enjoy this book, then when they get older I would recommend buying them one of the non-children's books that exist about Beebe, especially Carol Grant Gould's biography, The Remarkable Life of William Beebe: Explorer and Naturalist. There's a lot that's interesting about Beebe's life that Into the Deep doesn't mention at all.

William Beebe, a popular naturalist and author, loved all types of wildlife from an early age and trained himself in animal observation, taxidermy, insect mounting, and cataloging. Before he graduated from college he had already published articles in professional outlets and had gotten hired as the assistant curator of ornithology at the New York Zoological Park. Over the years, his unconventional approach to observing animals in their natural habitat and his courageous efforts to discover new species in remote regions generated a growing audience for his publications and public talks.

In the late 1920s, Beebe partnered with an engineering student named Otis Brown to invent the Bathysphere, a spherical diving vessel made of thick steel that enabled deep-sea exploration at depths hitherto unimagined. Their observations of magnificent sea creatures provided fodder for entertaining radio broadcasts and motivated people to start caring more about the environment.

This biography gets high marks for its informative and crisp writing style. Children will be especially intrigued by the Bathysphere, a somewhat daunting and mysterious-looking contraption that involved quite a bit of danger as well. The text seamlessly weaves some key concepts in economics, including innovation and human resources, into the account of Beebe's scientific contributions. The colorful and detailed illustrations work well to engage young learners.