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57 reviews for:
Trapped Under the Sea: One Engineering Marvel, Five Men, and a Disaster Ten Miles Into the Darkness
Neil Swidey
4.01 AVERAGE
57 reviews for:
Trapped Under the Sea: One Engineering Marvel, Five Men, and a Disaster Ten Miles Into the Darkness
Neil Swidey
4.01 AVERAGE
This is not the type of book I normally read, (Construction! Diving! Litigation!) but I enjoyed it. It read like a novel and it kept my attention. Very well written and thoroughly researched.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
emotional
informative
inspiring
sad
tense
fast-paced
I thought this was an amazing book. Swidey does an incredible job intertwining the background and lives of the major players while still painting the details of the accident so vividly that it's almost like being there. The book moves along almost like a novel and is entirely engrossing.
This book was FASCINATING. I listened to it on audio, and the performance was spot on.
This general premise: the city of Boston needs a better way to dispose of its waste, so they decide to build a tunnel to funnel the waste almost 10 miles out into the ocean. Sounds kinda boring/ gross right? No. Way. The author writes the perfect tale- switching between past and present- to create this amazing story that you cannot put down. Divers end up getting trapped at the very end of the tunnel, due to a combination of MANY over-sites in safety (not on their part), and they have to fight their way out.
It was so interesting! I'm so glad I gave this book a chance and put in on my TBR when I heard about it so long ago. Read this book!
This general premise: the city of Boston needs a better way to dispose of its waste, so they decide to build a tunnel to funnel the waste almost 10 miles out into the ocean. Sounds kinda boring/ gross right? No. Way. The author writes the perfect tale- switching between past and present- to create this amazing story that you cannot put down. Divers end up getting trapped at the very end of the tunnel, due to a combination of MANY over-sites in safety (not on their part), and they have to fight their way out.
It was so interesting! I'm so glad I gave this book a chance and put in on my TBR when I heard about it so long ago. Read this book!
An interesting and sad story about corporate malfeasance and hubris as well as a reminder of the people who work on public projects. Also, a great "dad" book, LOL!
Intense telling of a real life engineering disaster. I expected it to be dry but the writing is engaging and makes you care about every one of the players (whether or not you LIKE them is another matter). Really makes you think about where blame lies in situations like these. Could have used some editing since there are tangents and duplication of information but definitely worth the read.
I tend to read a lot of "disaster" books, and the "disaster" around which Trapped Under the Sea is focused barely qualifies for the label. Yes, five men did have an industrial accident far from the surface of the earth, and two lives were lost, but to me the event did not merit a nearly 400 page book. I could have satisfied my curiosity about this tunnel "disaster" by reading a magazine article.
There are so many barriers to reading this book, and yet, it's still worth it. Despite being a very technical and exhaustive review of a terrible quality problem involving finishing the work on a 10 mile long undersea tunnel meant to dump (treated) sewage into the ocean, including all the things that went wrong, with a total of three pictures, all other items being explained solely through text; it's actually quite engaging. Recommended to me as a companion piece to "The Field Guide to Understanding Human Error" it is indeed a story of industrial quality gone wrong and serves as a really useful case study for those who work in any quality or construction adjacent field.
There are some big takeaways around how to ensure that people at all levels can speak up when things appear unsafe, but the best quote in here comes from page 71:
"Researchers in organizational behavior point out that as trust levels go down within a group, group members' creativity and willingness to seek new options also decrease. When intense time pressures are added to the mix, opposing sides tend to become even more fixed in their positions, relying more on cognitive shortcuts. They're unable to work collaboratively to solve a problem because they have become locked in an adversarial contest: If you win, I lose. But with both sides so hardened in their positions, all they were doing was ensuring that they'd have to spend more time together in the tunnel."
Two minor quibbles with this book: when it comes time to explain PV=nRT, the lengthy description isn't effective - would be better to literally share this equation for how it affected some of the gas tanks. And, this author falls on the habit of describing the hair of the women in the book when he doesn't do the same for the men - something that is luckily becoming rarer in 21st century books.
It's almost as if we discovered the same thing Google researchers discovered 20 years after this case: psychological safety is the top factor that makes for the most effective teams. The lesson may stick a little better with this dark tale than the bland recent articles, however.
There are some big takeaways around how to ensure that people at all levels can speak up when things appear unsafe, but the best quote in here comes from page 71:
"Researchers in organizational behavior point out that as trust levels go down within a group, group members' creativity and willingness to seek new options also decrease. When intense time pressures are added to the mix, opposing sides tend to become even more fixed in their positions, relying more on cognitive shortcuts. They're unable to work collaboratively to solve a problem because they have become locked in an adversarial contest: If you win, I lose. But with both sides so hardened in their positions, all they were doing was ensuring that they'd have to spend more time together in the tunnel."
Two minor quibbles with this book: when it comes time to explain PV=nRT, the lengthy description isn't effective - would be better to literally share this equation for how it affected some of the gas tanks. And, this author falls on the habit of describing the hair of the women in the book when he doesn't do the same for the men - something that is luckily becoming rarer in 21st century books.
It's almost as if we discovered the same thing Google researchers discovered 20 years after this case: psychological safety is the top factor that makes for the most effective teams. The lesson may stick a little better with this dark tale than the bland recent articles, however.