Perspective

Kurson writes in the voice of an omniscient narrator who knows the thoughts and motivations behind the people who are his subjects. His two primary subjects are the deep sea divers John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, and he recreates the events surrounding the discovery and identification of U-869 based largely on their recollections and accounts of what happened. Kurson writes as if he is describing the events as they unfolded.

One of the themes that runs through Kurson's book is that history is not always recorded precisely. The two divers discover this when they learn the U-boat they have discovered near New Jersey is recorded as having been sunk near North Africa. Kurson attempts to create a kind of anti-intellectual perspective that describes the two amateur historians re-writing history that the academic historians got wrong.

Kurson also adopts a personal perspective to the story. Rather than simply presenting...