Kate’s 2¢: “The underworld: journeys to the depths of the ocean” by Susan Casey   

“The underworld: journeys to the depths of the ocean”

by Susan Casey   

NOTE: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as, describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ shares her thoughts about what she’s read. In her opinion…

Susan Casey did a good job of narrating her own book for us. It was one of seven books sent to me on one cartridge from the NLS.

   I liked the way she gave not just the facts about the history of submersibles, but also some of the personalities she met and the feelings they had about their dives and careers.

   Her descriptions of the animals and formations she observed while in the deeps were vivid and intriguing. I’d agree with her that the “stip mining’ of the oceans is a bad idea.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Susan Casey (born 1962) is a Canadian writer. She has been led editor of Sports Illustrated Women and O, The Oprah Magazine and she has written several non-fiction books including The Devil’s Teeth concerning sharks in the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary in California. In 2023, Casey published The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean, an investigation of the deep ocean, its history, its champions, and the urgent need for protection from destruction. Captivated by mysteries held by the 98% of our biosphere which is in the dark, Casey spent years researching the book, including two deep dives in Hawaii and the Caribbean.[9]

From NLS/BARD/LOC:

The underworld: journeys to the depths of the ocean DB117876

Author: Casey, Susan

Reading Time: 11 hours, 57 minutes

Read by: Susan Casey

Subjects: Nature and the Environment, Science and Technology

“A journey through the history of deep-sea exploration, from the myths and legends of the ancient world to storied shipwrecks we can now reach on the bottom, to the first intrepid bathysphere pilots, to the scientists who are just beginning to understand the mind-blowing complexity and ecological importance of the quadrillions of creatures who live in realms long thought to be devoid of life.” — Provided by publisher. Unrated. Commercial audiobook.

New York : Penguin Random House Audio, [2023]

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Kate’s 2¢: “Cocktails with George and Martha: movies, marriage, and the making of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” by Philip Gefter

“Cocktails with George and Martha: movies, marriage, and the making of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” by Philip Gefter

NOTE: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as, describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ shares her thoughts about what she’s read. In her opinion…

   Laura Giannarelli did a good job of narrating this lengthy book for us. It was one of seven books sent to me on one cartridge.

   “What a dump! May live forever in the minds of those who watched “Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Wolf?”, but this story is sometimes difficult to follow through the many strands of songs, plays, plots, and diversions.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Philip Gefter is an American cultural historian[1] and the author of four books: Photography After Frank (2009), a book of essays; Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe (2014),[2] the biography of Sam Wagstaff, for which he received the 2014 Marfield Prize, the national award for arts writing. What Becomes A Legend Most (2020), the biography of Richard Avedon; and Cocktails with George and Martha: Movies, Marriage, and the Making of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (2024). He was on staff at The New York Times for over fifteen years, both as a picture editor and photography critic. He produced the 2011 documentary film, Bill Cunningham New York.

Life[edit]

Gefter received a fine arts degree from the Pratt Institute in painting and photography.[3] He began his career as a picture researcher in the Time-Life Picture Collection,[citation needed] which exposed him to the photographs of Walker Evans, Margaret Bourke-White, Robert Capa, W. Eugene Smith, Gordon Parks, and Alfred Eisenstaedt, among other consequential photographers. Following that, he took a job at Aperture Foundation, where, as assistant editor, he worked on the Aperture History of Photography series and on publications such as Edward Weston: Nudes; America and Lewis Hine; and the re-publication of Robert Frank’s The Americans.

From 1992 until 2016, he was on staff at The New York Times as a picture editor, becoming the Page One Picture Editor from 1999 until 2003, and, then, as a picture editor in Culture, writing about photography as a critic for the paper.

In 2002, he and Richard Press (who were married in 2008) commissioned the architect, Michael Bell, to build a house for them in New York State’s Hudson Valley. The Gefter-Press House,[4] completed in 2007, is included in the book, American Masterworks: Houses of the Twentieth and Twenty First Centuries (Rizzoli), by the architectural historian, Kenneth Frampton.

In 2011, he and Richard Press released their feature-length documentary film Bill Cunningham New York, about The New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham.

In 2011, Gefter received a Museum Scholar residency at the Getty Research Institute,[5] the Getty Center, in Los Angeles, to work on a biography of Sam Wagstaff, the curator, collector, and patron of Robert Mapplethorpe, for the publisher W. W. Norton/Liveright, a project he began in 2009.

In 2025, Gefter’s papers were acquired by the Beinecke Library at Yale University, including his writings, his journals, personal papers, correspondence, photographs, drawings, printed material, and artifacts. [6]

Gay rights[edit]

Beginning in the early 1970s, Gefter was active in the gay rights movement, in the Gay Activists Alliance; Gay Academic Union; and Gay Media Coalition.[citation needed] He coauthored and was a subject of a book about his same-sex relationship, Lovers: The Story of Two Men (Avon, 1979). In 1981, he was a founding member of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, formed in Larry Kramer’s living room when the earliest cases of HIV/AIDS (still then yet to be named) were reported. In 1991, he was a founding member of the New York chapter of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, serving as chapter president from 1993 to 1995.[citation needed]

• 2024: Theater Library Association’s Richard Wall Memorial Award Special Jury Prize [8] for Cocktails with George and Martha.

From NLS/BARD/LOC:

Cocktails with George and Martha: movies, marriage, and the making of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? fDB121300

Author: Gefter, Philip

Reading Time: 14 hours, 24 minutes

Read by: Laura Giannarelli

Subjects: Biography of Entertainers, Biography of Writers, Drama, Human Relations, Literature

“An award-winning author presents the history and impact of both the theatrical and cinematic versions of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and how it forced audiences to confront deeply-held concepts about relationships, sex, and family”–OCLC. Strong language.

New York : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024.

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