Water Baby: The Story of Alvin

by Victoria A. Kaharl

A riveting history of the world's first deep-diving submarine. Packed with colorful characters, close calls, and amazing discoveries, Water Baby provides a fascinating warts-and-all portrait of how science is actually done. Beautifully illustrated with sixteen pages of full-color and dozens of black-and-white photographs.

Genres: Nonfiction

400 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[Dorraine Rooney · Rating 5 out of 5]

good book for any ocean lover or ocean scientist

[Tj · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite book of ALL TIME!!!! If you have a REAL interest in Marine Biology, ocean geology, or physics, oceaonography, and the like you will appreciate this book. It gets very specific and into the science of building ALVIN and all the dive trips. Read it as a marine biology major and loved it. Read it again as a U.S. Coast Guard marine inspector and got to appreciate it from the perspective of contruction and attempts by builders to comply with appropriate regulations. Glad I was able to buy one of the last copies ever.

[Joshsisson · Rating 3 out of 5]

So far it's OK. Written like a novel but with technical material on the design and construction of Alvin submersible vehicle which I find interesting. Some chapters are about the discoveries of Alvin, such as the Titanic, hydro-thermal vent fields, new species, etc. which is very cool. Lastly a lot of extraneous material about some of the people involved which I find not so interesting. It seems like the author has an agenda to discredit some people.