It depends what you mean by the history of diving. When I read your original message, I thought you meant modern books tracing the evolution of diving over decades or centuries. Now I see you include books published, say, during the mid twentieth century and discussing the state of diving at that time.
I am going to concentrate in this posting on published reading lists of historical diving literature. I'll begin with a paperback book that I have on my bookshelf:
Stephen W. Collins (compiler) (1973)
Down to the sea with books: NAUI International Bibliography of Diving and Related Sciences, Colton, CA: NAUI Diving Association. Here's an image of the front cover:
"Down to the sea with books" is not only valuable because of the breadth of its content, but also because of the way it breaks its collection of titles into thematic sections, or "topics". Here are the headings in the "topics" section of this bibliography:
Aquatic life
Cave Diving
Commercial diving: underwater work and salvage
Diving equipment and maintenance
Diving for treasure
Diving medicine and physiology
First aid, life saving, scuba rescue and water safety
Legal aspects of diving and maritime law
Limnology
Marine biology and marine life
Marine sciences and technology
Oceanography
Scientific and research diving
Shell collecting and aquariums
Sound - underwater
Sports diving and underwater education
Underwater adventure and exploration
Underwater archeology
Underwater instruction: swimming, skin and scuba diving
Underwater navigation and search procedure
Underwater photography
Underwater submersibles and habitats
There's some overlap in the coverage of the topics, e.g. "Sports diving and underwater education" and "Underwater instruction: swimming, skin and scuba diving", but book titles only appear once, so there's some subjectivity in the choice of "topics".
Two further bibliographies of historical diving literature:
1. 1. Shilling, Charles Wesley and Werts, Margaret F. (1971)
An Annotated Bibliography on Diving and Submarine Medicine, New York, NY: Gordon and Breach.
This tome focuses on the medical side of diving. If you want a preview, follow the link
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...AactoDQDg&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false.
2.
Saggio di bibliografia sulla caccia subacquea: testi in lingua inglese,
http://www.morgansub.com/Morgansub/Biblioteca_del_mare-Libri_Caccia_subaquea_Stranieri_files/SAGGIO DI BIBLIOGRAFIA SULLA CACCIA SUBACQUEA INGLESI AGG. 16-07-12 .pdf.
The title may be in Italian, but the books and articles listed are all in English. This document is interesting because it lists titles in chronological order, so you can see the order in which they were written. From my British perspective, I'm pleased to note that "written in English" also means titles published outside the USA!
I may later return with a list of my own favourite titles from the history of British diving.
