A Hole at the Bottom of the Sea The Race to Kill the BP Oil Gusher [Paperback]

The struggle to kill the BP Macondo gusher in the Gulf of Mexico is the Apollo 13 of our time. This is the story of the nightmare well and of the men who conquered it in dangerous waters. It is a technological thriller for the ages.

It was a technological crisis in an alien realm: a blown-out oil well in mile-deep water in the Gulf of Mexico. For the engineers who had to kill the well, this was like Apollo 13, a crisis of untold danger and an unprecedented challenge. A suspense story, a mystery, a human tragedy: Achenbach has written a cautionary tale that doubles as a technological thriller.Joel Achenbachis a senior writer forThe Washington Post’s national news desk, writing on science and politics. He started the newsroom’s first online column in 1999 and the paper’s first blog, Achenblog, in 2005, and ledTheWashington Post’s coverage of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. He has taught journalism at Princeton and Georgetown. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Mary Stapp, and their three daughters.“Achenbach lives up to his promises to make the disaster ‘into a tale that everyone can comprehend,’ with fluid, often Spartan prose and a candid tone. . . .

--Los Angeles Times“A gripping, insightful, sobering and at times heroic tale of the struggle to find a solution to a technological problem whose precise source is still a mystery.”
--The Globe and Mail(Canada)“Briskly informative and even-handed. . . .A Hole at the Bottom of the Seawill not make anyone feel better about the BP spill. But with economic and political pressure on to resume deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, it’s a book anyone who lives along its shores needs to read.”
--St. Petersburg Times“Briskly informative and even-handed. . . .A Hole at the Bottom of the Seawill not make anyone feel better ablS'