The Human, the Orchid, and the Octopus: Exploring and Conserving Our Natural World » (Unabridged)

Jacques Cousteau (1910– 1997) was world renowned as an ocean explorer, filmmaker, educator, and environmental activist. He won three Oscars and the Palme d’ Or for his films,"" was nominated for forty Emmys during the run of his TV series "The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau," and wrote or coauthored more than seventy five books, including "The Silent World," which has sold five million copies in twenty two languages. As director of the Oceanographic Institute of Monaco and a member of the advisory committee of the IAEA, he was active in the conservation and anti-nuclear-proliferation movements. Susan Schiefelbein has won the National Magazine Award and the Front Page Award for her cover stories on social issues. A former editor at the "Saturday Review," where she first worked with Cousteau, she went on to write the narration for many of his documentary films, including winners of the Peabody and the Ace. She lives in Paris.

Part adventure story, part manifesto, this is legendary ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau's passionate plea for sustaining life on earth.

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.)

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Foreword   Bill McKibben     ix
Introduction   Susan Schiefelbein     1
The Drive to Explore     27
Personal Risk     45
Public Risk     80
Irreplaceable Water, Irreplaceable Air     106
The Holy Scriptures and the Environment     116
Saccage     130
Catch as Catch Can     146
Science and Human Values     178
The Hot Peace: Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Energy     205
Life in a Billion Years     263
The Miracle of Life: The Human, the Orchid, and the Octopus     276
Epilogue: An Update Since the Writing of This Book     293
Selected Bibliography     303