About this item
One Breath is a gripping and powerful exploration of the strange and fascinating sport of freediving, and of the tragic, untimely death of America's greatest freediver Competitive freediving - a sport built on diving as deep as possible on a single breath - tests the limits of human ability in the most hostile environment on earth. The unique and eclectic breed of individuals who freedive at the highest level regularly dive hundreds of feet below the ocean's surface, reaching such depths that their organs compress, light disappears, and one mistake could kill them.Even among freedivers, few have ever gone as deep as Nicholas Mevoli. A handsome young American with an unmatched talent for the sport, Nick was among freediving's brightest stars. He was also an extraordinary individual, one who rebelled against the vapid and commoditized society around him by relentlessly questing for something more meaningful and authentic, whatever the risks. So when Nick Mevoli arrived at Vertical Blue in 2013, the world's premier freediving competition, he was widely expected to challenge records and continue his meteoric rise to stardom. Instead, before the end of that fateful competition Nick Mevoli had died, a victim of the sport that had made him a star, and the very future of free diving was called into question. With unparalleled access and masterfully crafted prose, One Breath tells his unforgettable story, and of the sport which shaped and ultimately destroyed him.
About the Author
ADAM SKOLNICK has written for the New York Times, Playboy, Outside, ESPN.com, BBC.com, Salon.com, Men's Health, Wired, and Travel Leisure, among others. He has visited 45 countries and authored or coauthored over 30 Lonely Planet guidebooks. ONE BREATH, his first narrative non-fiction book, will be out on Crown Archetype (a Penguin Random House imprint) on January 12, 2016.
It's about the dangerous, beautiful sport of competitive freediving and the life and death of Nicholas Mevoli, America's greatest freediver. A blend of two of INTO THE WILD and THE WAVE, ONE BREATH traces Mevoli's life from his Florida childhood to the anti-establishment punk squats in West Philadelphia to the streets of a blooming Bohemia in Williamsburg, Brooklyn to his record breaking career in the sport he loved. Along the way readers bounce between Mevoli's life and the 2014 freediving season to meet the sport's greatest athletes and rivalries, and hear from pathologists and doctors researching Mevoli's death. What they discover raises the stakes for the world's best divers who remain compelled to risk death in order to go deeper than they ever have before.
