Rowman & Littlefield Publishers / Rowman & Littlefield International
Pages: 180
Trim: 6⅜ x 9
978-1-78660-730-0 • Hardback • August 2021 • $122.00 • (£94.00)
978-1-5381-5698-8 • Paperback • February 2023 • $40.00 • (£30.00)
978-1-78660-731-7 • eBook • August 2021 • $38.00 • (£30.00)
Rachael Squire is a Political Geographer and Lecturer in Human Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research engages with the concepts of territory, embodiment, and ‘volume’ with a particular focus on the space of the sea.
1. Introduction: Towards the ‘Deep Dark Sea’
2. ‘Taking Chances for all of Mankind’: Taming the Underwater Frontier
3. Domesticating and Dishwashing: Making Home on the Seafloor
4. ‘A Breed Apart’: Taking the Measure of Man
5. ‘Think Helium’: Submarine Pressures and Elemental Entanglements
6. Companions, Zappers, and Invaders: The Animals of Sealab
7. From Sealab to Skylab: Inhabiting Extremes
8. Conclusions
Extending critical geopolitical analysis to investigate an unlikely venue, Rachel Squire brilliantly shows how American cold war geopolitical culture was a combination of science, masculinity and exploration. This fascinating account of a nearly forgotten scientific project explores the underwater world of Sealab, its aquanauts, scientists and their dangerous experimental habitat, built in the quest to dominate the frontier space of the ocean.
— Simon Dalby, Balsillie School of International Affairs, Wilfrid Laurier University
A fascinating study of a little-known story in the Cold War. Using archival and other historical sources, Squire takes us beneath the surface to explore the world of Sealab with its multiple geographies. Engagingly written and conceptually innovative, this is an important contribution to political geography and wider debates about territory, volume and materiality.
— Stuart Elden, Professor of Political Theory and Geography, University of Warwick
This is a book charting attempts at future making that might have been—itself a fascinating topic amidst current literatures tackling questions of the “future.”[3] Indeed, for all that this is a richly researched historical foray into the various projects of the US Navy, evidenced with rich archival materials and evocative photographs of missions, Squire weaves a maritime story that remains ever current.
— H-Net: Humanities and Social Science Reviews Online