Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher

BELOW THE EDGE OF DARKNESS

Edith Widder

A Memoir of Exploring Light and Life in the Deep Sea

A marine biologist’s quest to study and understand the language of light in the breathtaking darkness of the deep ocean, the largest and least understood habitat in the world.

Edie grew up determined to be a marine biologist but a botched surgery during college caused her to go blind, a temporary condition that left in her a fascination with both light and the power of optimism. Her focus turned to oceanic bioluminescence, a scientific frontier in our last earthly one, and with very little promise of funding or employment she took a brave leap into the darkness. On her first ever visit to the deep ocean, in an experimental diving suit that took her to a depth of 800 feet, she turned off the suit's lights and witnessed breathtaking explosions of bioluminescent activity. Concerns about her career went out the window. "I just wanted to know why. Why was there so much light down there?" BELOW THE EDGE OF DARKNESS takes readers deep into our planet's oceans as Widder pursues her questions about one of the most important and widely used forms of communication in nature. In the process, she reveals hidden worlds and a dazzling menagerie of behaviors and animals, from leviathans to shrimp, many never-before-seen. We live through life and death equipment malfunctions, witness breakthroughs in technology and understanding, all of it set against a growing awareness of the deteriorating health of this, our largest and least understood biosphere. BELOW THE EDGE OF DARKNESS will draw inevitable comparisons to NYT Bestsellers like Hope Jahren's LAB GIRL, Sy Montgomery's THE SOUL OF AN OCTOPUS, Neal Shubin's YOUR INNER FISH, and even Linda Greenlaw's THE HUNGRY OCEAN. What's more, Edie's commitment to understanding the hidden systems and beauty at work inside something we take for granted will remind natural history and environmental readers of beloved recent titles like Peter Wohlleben's THE SECRET LIFE OF TREES, and David George Haskell's THE FOREST UNSEEN. Dr. Edith (Edie) A. Widder is our ambassador to the deep. I think of her as a combination between Jacques Cousteau and Sally Ride. She's scientist, an explorer, an inventor, and a trailblazer. Her career as an ocean-going marine biologist is a highlight reel of adventure and discovery. In hundreds of deep dives her quest to observe, understand, and even interact with bioluminescent animal life has taken her to some of the most remote and inhospitable places on Earth. She's the first person to film a living giant squid, she's the recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant, she has given three TED talks (5 million cumulative views), and been featured in The New York Times, Slate, Nature, and CBS Evening News, among many others. Her work has appeared in nature programming on The Discovery Channel, PBS Discovery, the BBC, and National Geographic television and she was profiled by Nova Science Now. She is a former senior scientist at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution and the co-founder of the Ocean Research and Conservation Association (Orca), a non-profit organization dedicated to the protection of aquatic ecosystems and the species they sustain through development of innovative technologies and science-based conservation action.

Available products
Book Published 2021-07-27 by Random House

Comments

Personal and page-turning, adventurous and awe-inspiring, Below the Edge of Darkness sparkles with the thrill of exploration and glows with an urgent plea for the future of our precious seas. Comparisons to Jacques Cousteau spring to mind, as Edith Widder shares the profound journey of her life - one as unique and important as the unexplored realms of our very own planet.

BELOW THE EDGE OF DARKNESS was chosen as a Booklist Editor's Choice as one of the most outstanding books of 2021: "Innovative and intrepid marine biologist Widder chronicles her ludicrous, terrifying, and enthralling deep-sea investigations of bioluminescence, the light generated by sea creatures ranging from the crystal jelly to the lantern shark." Read more...

Edie Widder filmed this video on a recent voyage underscoring the importance of her book. Read more...

Widder's passion is so contagious that by the end of the book, I was yearning to explore these deep, dark waters with her... She's a clear, informative writer with exciting adventures to share. Her enthu-siasm is matched by her sense of humor, which is frequently on full display. With Widder as their guide, readers of Below the Edge of Darkness will become staunch champi-ons of the spectacular bioluminescent world that thrives in the ocean's depths. It's a display they'll long to see, and an education they'll never forget. Read more...

Her most recent TED talk, in which she discusses her encounter with a Giant Squid. Read more...

Edie's story is one of hardscrabble optimism, two-fisted exploration and groundbreaking research. As I've said many times, I'd have wrapped my submersible, the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER, in bacon if it would have lured the elusive giant squid from the depths. In Below the Edge of Darkness, Edie tells you how she did it.

Below the Edge of Darkness was the cover of this weekend's New York Times Book Review who call it "a thrilling blend of hard science and high adventure." Read more...

UK: Virago ; Australia: Text Publishing ; China: Citic ; Italy: Bollati Boringhieri ; Japanese: Kinokuniya ; Korean: Daewon

Enthralling... The science throughout the book is fascinating as Widder repeatedly revolutionizes her field, but there is much more than science here. Widder is also an explorer, an inventor and a captivating storyteller whose life has been uncommonly adventurous, both on land and at sea.

My experience of exploring the deep ocean and its alien life with Edie Widder was fabulous. She enthralls us with many such stories in her book. I recommend it.

...The creatures of the deep have been putting on the world's greatest light show for tens of millions of years. Widder thinks that if people could witness this spectacle - or even just be made aware of it - they'd pay a lot more attention to life at the bottom of the seas and the many hazards that threaten it. These include but are not limited to global warming, ocean acidification, overfishing, agricultural runoff, oil spills, invasive species, bottom trawling, plastic waste, and seabed mining... Read more...

A thrilling adventure story as well as a scientific revelation, Below the Edge of Darkness reckons with the complicated and sometimes dangerous realities of exploration. Widder shows us how when we push our boundaries and expand our worlds, discovery and wonder follow.

Both scientists have produced stylish, eloquent works, with Widder's being the more personal, beginning with her account of an adolescent illness that nearly left her blind and then moving to her current position as a world expert on underwater light communication. "My obsession with bioluminescence grew out of my brush with blindness," she writes. Read more...

A superbly captivating writer, Widder fluently elucidates complex scientific inquiries and findings pertaining to how bioluminescence helps marine species thrive in the watery realm where "there's nothing to hide behind." She also renders the ludicrous, the terrifying, and the enthralling with equal vim and vigor...

To shed light on a subject is what any scientific book should do. To go into it in depth without losing the reader is a harder task. Edith Widder's subject is light itself the manufacture of light by strange and eerie denizens of the deep sea - and her scintillating style is worthy of it. This is a book to delight the general reader while simultaneously informing the professional: a book of marvels, marvelously written.

Oceanographer and marine biologist Widder is on a mission both to pry the secrets "below the edge of darkness" from its denizens and to save this habitat before human pollution destroys it - an eventuality that would particularly impact developing nations and indigenous peoples. She has spent her life studying bioluminescence [and] this book illustrates the careful, curious, years-long quest of a scientist in love with her work. Widder peppers her text with witty asides as footnotes that invite readers into her passion. Highly recommended.

a captivating, watery-world personal memoir about exploring bioluminescence ("pure magic of living light") and an urgent plea to protect the world's largest ecosystem... Widder's enthusiastic, joyful memoir amply describes the "wonder and exhilaration of discovery." Inspiring for science-loving readers and environmentalists young and old.

a fascinating debut... Informs and electrifies in equal measure.

Here's a brief clip of Edie at work from the recent Blue Planet II. Read more...

This autobiography is an adventure story as well as a scientific one, as Widder navigates tense equipment malfunctions while exploring questions about our largest ecosystem, one that is increasingly threatened.

'Luminous' - the topic, the heroic journey, and the author herself. Dive in with Edith Widder, trail-blazing scientist and explorer, as she reveals the galaxy of light and life in the universe below the surface of the sea, out-shining skeptical male colleagues with dignity, grace and a robust sense of humor.