Jacques Cousteau

Rating:
Summary: Genie Iverson, Jacques Cousteau
Review: This juvenile biography of the French underwater explorer is illustrated with excellent sketches by Hal Ashmead (although the lettering on pp. 13 and 31 is in English rather than French). There is no mention, however, of the window breaking, which led to Cousteau being sent off to school, while the statement that Cousteau was assigned to a ship in the Mediterranean to recuperate after his automobile accident (see p. 17), is not reflected in either Madsen's nor Munson's more thorough biographies, both of which merely state that he was assigned to the naval port of Toulon. The account of the Undersea Research Group (more correctly, the Groupe d'Etudes et de Recherches Sous-Marines - or Group of Studies and Undersea Research) was established after the defeat of Germany, rather than during the war as Iverson's text suggests (see p. 30), while "the first undersea human colony" (at p. 47), mentioned as being built in 1963, was clearly Conshelf II - its prototype had been constructed in the Mediterranean the previous year.