the world in the ocean

‘Wise, compassionate, and urgent.’ Robert Macfarlane, author of Underland

A Bookseller Nonfiction Editor’s Choice for March 2024

Plunge into the depths of the unknown in this thrilling work of nonfiction that combines science, history, and nature writing to explore the deepest recesses of the natural world.

Oceans created, shaped, and sustain not just human life, but all life on Earth, and perhaps beyond it. They are our history — from evolution to exploration and colonialism; our present — from beach holidays to transporting food and goods; and, as rising sea levels and warming water reshape coastlines and the climate, our future.

Deep Water is a reckoning with humankind’s complex relationship with the ocean, a book shaped by tidal movements and vast currents, and lit by the presence of other minds and other ways of being. It speaks directly and uncompromisingly of the urgency of the environmental catastrophe that is overtaking us, but is also suffused with the glories of the ocean, and alert to the extraordinary efforts of the scientists and researchers whose work helps us understand its secrets. Immense in scope but also profoundly personal, it offers vital new ways of understanding humanity’s place on our planet, and shows that the oceans might yet save us all.