One of at least three books on the famous Thai cave rescue from 2018. This is the ghost written autobiography of Rick Stanton, the lead diver, on his life and how he came to have the skills and experience necessary to perform the rescue, and a description of the rescue itself. It is set out with an interleaved timeline, a portion of the rescue followed by some more of Rick's history as he develops techniques and abilities. The mindset was there from a very early age!

It is a very honest book. If you've seen the recent film The Rescue, it is quickly apparent that Rick is quite an idiosyncratic individual. He's always been very focused and economic in effort, from school onwards something either has his full attention, or the barest minimum required to get whatever it is out of the way so he can get back to cave diving. Cave diving is very much at the specialist and extreme end of caving, and within that select community Rick is (well was, he doesn't dive that much anymore) very much at the specialist and extreme end. He has spent the best part of 40 years developing and refining his techniques to be the first (sometimes only, sometimes one of two or three other people) to reach some underground locations - more people have been on the moon than have visited places Rick has been. The book carefully highlights various episodes of Rick's history as exemplars (and not at all in any kind of self-important way) of the development of the kinds of thoughts and mindsets required to reach this level of ability. For Rick it was very apparent that although the destination was necessary it was actually the travelling that was the most enjoyable - the preparation and planning the testing and developing, the exploring of the path along the way - something perhaps we can all take away from this book.

The story of the rescue is well known to anyone who was following it at the time, but Rick adds many fascinating details that weren't so clear at the time. It was very interesting to hear Rick's thoughts on the interaction with Elon Musk, and also the Thai authorities. The descriptions of the passages and complexities of the operation are laid out in a very clear manner without over reliance on technical terms. A glossary is included for anything that isn't clear, as well as several pages of footnotes. The writing style is very very approachable, slightly dry leavened with a touch of humour, always engaging and easy to read. I'm not a big fan of disrupted timelines, but this does work very well. If I was going to be picky the only obvious absence is any comments at all from any of his various girlfriends over the years. They are mentioned and Rick admits some of them weren't treated fairly against his passion for cave diving, but none of them appear in the text in person, whereas various of the caving buddies do add the odd impression of Rick's character. The last chapter is particularly interesting, written, perhaps, more by Rick himself, it details how much his life has changed after what was, for him initially at least, just another rescue - a chance to pay back to the caving community for some of the help and assistance he'd received over the decades to get to where he was, and for the fun he'd had on the way.

It's a fascinating book and I fully recommend it to anyone who is interested in the Thai Cave Rescue, or caving diving in general. I don't generally read that many biographies and I was initially a little dubious as to whether this would add anything, with so much already being in the public domain, but I was completely convinced, it's simply a great read. ( )