Scuba diving, from the beginning, had an air of dangerous allure. Every landlocked schoolboy knew of its intriguing hazards: the bends, which caused a diver's veins to fizz with carbonated blood until he died a ghastly, percolating death; and rapture of the deep, which took away his reason, filled his heart with false contentment, and drew him down into the ocean gloom.

Scuba diving, from the beginning, had an air of dangerous allure. Every landlocked schoolboy knew of its intriguing hazards: the bends, which caused a diver's veins to fizz with carbonated blood until he died a ghastly, percolating death; and rapture of the deep, which took away his reason, filled his heart with false contentment, and drew him down into the ocean gloom.

Lonesome Dove is a great book that had the rare fortune of being made into a great movie. And now, through Bill Wittliff's photographs, we have a third generation of Lonesome Dove artistry. The same creative power and conviction that allowed Larry McMurtry to transform a workaday scenario for an unproduced screenplay into one of the greatest novels of our time, and that transformed that novel into the greatest western movie ever made, are on display in this collection. A Book of Photographs from Lonesome Dove is a masterpiece begot by a masterpiece begot by a masterpiece.

It is an old dream: To travel on the back of a benevolent sea beast down to some secret underwater garden.