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Jacques-Yves Cousteau had one of those faces that seemed to come from an earlier time — before the world wars, maybe even before the 20th century. It was a face so thin and tapered yet open, so creased with character, so French. The hawkish Gallic nose. The Aznavour eyes. The big wide stretchy geek smile that seemed to grin back at the entire world. Cousteau didn’t just popularize undersea diving as we know it; he created it. To accomplish what he did, he needed to be an athlete, a scientist, an inventor, an adventurer, a filmmaker, and a sea-dog ringleader. Somehow he was a man who fit each of those roles. Standing aboard his American-made vessel, the Calypso, in his red wool cap and bathing suit, surrounded by a crew of devoted French roughnecks, he looked too skinny to be a mere jock, too earthy to be a professor, too...