Blind Descent: The Quest to Discover the Deepest Place on Earth
by James M. Tabor
Puff piece (10/5/2024)
This book amounts to little more than a puff piece, which spends the majority of its pages being weirdly infatuated with the deeply unlikeable main subject, Bill Stone. It’s an odd choice for the author to spend so much time fawning over the sex life of one caver of little consequence in the field, and then end the book with a passing mention of the Ukrainian caver who actually discovered a far deeper cave while also conducting real science. It’s also written in an incredibly sensationalistic style, endlessly discussing the dangers of “supercaves” (a term I’ve never heard used by anyone else in the caving community — perhaps it’s a Stone-ism being passed off as a widely used caving term?). I can’t recommend this book. Jill Heinerth’s book on cave diving is way better.