The Devil’s Teeth

Journalist Susan Casey first came across the Farallon Islands' great white sharks in a documentary, where they circled a small motorboat, and she grew infatuated with them. The islands sit 27 miles off San Francisco, and sailors in the 1850s nicknamed them the devil's teeth. Within months she was hoisted by crane up a cliff onto Southeast Farallon Island to join two biologists who spend each fall shark season in its one habitable building, an old house crusted with lichen and gull droppings. Some of the sharks there exceed twenty feet. Casey often presents herself as a nautical novice. The 2005 book reached the New York Times bestseller list and was an NPR Summer Reading selection.

Cal Newport, an admirer of Susan Casey's nature journalism built around her own adventures, suggested it as the first of her books to read.