Jacques-Yves Cousteau (The World's great explorers)

Rating:
Summary: Susan Sinnott, Jacques-Yves Cousteau
Review: This is an account of Cousteau's life, written for juveniles. While the book is generally well-illustrated with photographs, one does wonder at the choice of a picture from Desert Storm rather than a more appropriate illustration of post- World War II mine-clearing operations (at p. 45).

Napoleon Bonaparte is mis-identified as an enemy of France (at p. 25), and Simone Cousteau's bolt to a café to order a "stiff cognac" (see Alex Madsen's Cousteau: An Unauthorized Biography, at p. 57) becomes Simone sitting "alone and frightened in a café waiting for word of her husband's fate" (at p. 52). Sinnott does not mention the reason Cousteau's film on Conshelf III became a television special (see DuTemple's book on Cousteau at p. 86) nor does she say anything about the cancellation of Conshelf IV and V or the Argyronete project. The power struggle between Philippe Cousteau and Jacques is not touched on, and one might wish for more on Cousteau's theory that a grouper swallowed the Biblical Jonah (at p. 106).