Susan Casey - The Devil’s Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America’s Great White Sharks

Susan Caseys lively portrait of life among Northern Californias white sharks and the dogged researchers who study them indulges in just the right mix of anxiety, gore and reassuring shark science. One can find reason to fear the waves and then muster the courage to enter them, usually within the same chapter. The sharks are the stars of Caseys story, but the Farallones steal the show.

The New York Times Book Review

Extraordinary.

Mens Journal

[A] page-turnerLos Farallones remain icons of the elemental and the wild. Most visitors can only glimpse them from afar, from a whale watch or dive boat. So true insight has to come from someone privileged to live on the rocks with the tiny crew of professional biologists that dwell in weathered old Coast Guard housing. This book makes the most of that sort of insider access. A fine read. The book gives you a way of reaching these mysterious isles without getting wet. Or seasick.

San Francisco Chronicle

Caseys chronicle of how this unique environment survived nuclear contamination and endless harebrained development schemes (including the proposed relocation of Alcatraz) is one of many stranger-than-fiction elements. As the shark trivia and anecdotes about the islands Wild West past give way to a hair-raising account of an ill-fated shark-tagging mission, Casey becomes an increasingly active participant in the story while offering skillfully wrought descriptions of natures inscrutable fury. B+.

Entertainment Weekly

A chilling dispatch from the great white shark-filled waters off San Francisco.

Life

ChillingA lively and detailed accountvivid.

USA Today

An evocative and entertaining account of the cutting edge of marine biology.

New Scientist

Casey has a flair for dramatic descriptions, able to capture the characters she encounters or the landscape around her with equal aplomb[Paints] a gripping portrait of scientists on the outer fringes of society and nature.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Casey creates compelling portraits of the legendary predators, as well as of the scientists.

People

You cant help but be entertained by a writer who is affectionate about a sharks maniac smile and thinks a petrel smells musky and heavy and sort of smoky, like the bird had been part of an all-night poker game. Being seduced into caring about the survival of a 20-foot-long, eight-foot-wide, six-foot-deep nightmare beast is a much harder job, and Casey accomplishes even that without hardly trying. Her book is an exhilarating reminder that there are elements of both wonder and revulsion in all things sublime.

Newsday

Guaranteed to scare people right out of the water.

Associated Press

A rare sort of adventure story, which she tells with verve and great sympathy for the islands, the sharks and the biologists. But another poignant theme resonates through the book as wellGreat whites provide Casey a meaning to life beyond the human, Thoreaus tonic of wildness.

The Oregonian

Casey delivers amazing details The Devils Teeth will surely satisfy your appetite for all things fanged and finned.

National Geographic Adventure

Riveting and colorful you-are-there adventure.

Santa Cruz Sentinel

I read Susan Caseys book in a feeding frenzy, satisfying my curiosity while fueling my fascination with sharks. A thoroughly researched and well-written piece of literature that raises hairs as well as tickling funny bones, The Devils Teeth artfully reveals what lurks in the shadows of the mysterious great white and the people obsessed with them. The true triumph of the book, though, is in Caseys transcendence of mere journalismshes clearly embraced by the world of which she writes.

Linda Greenlaw, author of The Hungry Ocean and All Fishermen Are Liars

A marvelous bookpart adventure, part meditation, part natural historythat takes the reader on a wild ride into a strange and seductive world. Casey is the perfect diving companion; her account of life among San Franciscos shark population is engaging, smart, and irresistible.

Susan Orlean, author of My Kind of Place and The Orchid Thief

In delivering us to the Farallon Islands, and then into the souls of the magnificent great white sharks that populate its waters, Susan Casey has really delivered us into the DNA of our own beings. The Devils Teeth is more than a shark story; it is an account of our instincts, our appetites, even our futures, all beautifully told by a writer compelled to know.

Robert Kurson, author of Shadow Divers

Theres another world, and its in this one, declares Susan Casey, reveling in the surreality of her days and nights spent among the worlds coolest, cold-eyed customers, great white sharks. Who knew these beasts lived so close to San Francisco, within the pizza delivery zone of that fair city? Casey is a poet, a bare-knuckled spirit, unabashed and funny, and hers is an entrancing ride to a beautiful, forbidding place, a new world, close by. Hang on.

Doug Stanton, author of In Harms Way

Susan Casey could write about guppies, and Id want to read her book. I devoured this book like a shark.

Mary Roach, author of Stiff

To my family:

Ron, Angela, Bob, and Bill,

who taught me to love the wild things.

Humanity is exalted not because we are so far
above all living creatures, but because knowing
them well elevates the very concept of life.

EDWARD O . WILSON

Every angel is terrifying.

RAINER MARIA RILKE