Three Generations, One Restless Family

Journalist Tom Cheshire, with a foreword by filmmaker and deep-sea explorer James Cameron, traces the record of the Piccard family across three generations of exploration. Auguste Piccard, a physicist, became the first person to reach the stratosphere in a balloon of his own design in 1931. His son Jacques, an economist by training, went on to pilot a submersible to the deepest point of the Mariana Trench, a depth that has still not been surpassed. Bertrand, Jacques's son, later completed the first non-stop balloon circumnavigation of the globe and pursued solar-powered flight.

Cheshire weaves these three stories together, asking what drove one family to repeatedly push into the highest, deepest and furthest reaches of the planet, none of them having originally set out to become professional explorers at all.

A compelling read for anyone interested in exploration history, aviation, deep-sea diving or family biography.

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