The Story of Swimming


Book Description

A new wave of passion has emerged for open water swimming, but it is a British tradition that has deep roots. Susie Parr takes a chronological look at the social history of swimming from the earliest Roman written accounts, stories of Viking invaders, medieval and Elizabethan literature, medicinal seabathing in 18th century and the rise of Georgian and Regency watering holes such as Brighton. She follows the line of literary swimmers from Shelley to Murdoch and charts the boom of the British seaside resort in a fascinating and hugely enjoyable journey.




Swim


Book Description

Explores the nature and appeal of swimming, from the history of the strokes to aspects of modern Olympic competition, as well as the author's personal experiences and milestones in the sport.




Shifting Currents


Book Description

A deep dive into the history of aquatics that exposes centuries-old tensions of race, gender, and power at the root of many contemporary swimming controversies. Shifting Currents is an original and comprehensive history of swimming. It examines the tension that arose when non-swimming northerners met African and Southeast Asian swimmers. Using archaeological, textual, and art-historical sources, Karen Eva Carr shows how the water simultaneously attracted and repelled these northerners—swimming seemed uncanny, related to witchcraft and sin. Europeans used Africans’ and Native Americans’ swimming skills to justify enslaving them, but northerners also wanted to claim water’s power for themselves. They imagined that swimming would bring them health and demonstrate their scientific modernity. As Carr reveals, this unresolved tension still sexualizes women’s swimming and marginalizes Black and Indigenous swimmers today. Thus, the history of swimming offers a new lens through which to gain a clearer view of race, gender, and power on a centuries-long scale.




Splash!


Book Description

Choose a stroke and get paddling through the human history of swimming! From man's first recorded dip into what's now the driest spot on earth to the splashing, sparkling pool party in your backyard, humans have been getting wet for 10,000 years. And for most of modern history, swimming has caused a ripple that touches us all--the heroes and the ordinary folk; the real and the mythic. Splash! dives into Egypt, winds through ancient Greece and Rome, flows mostly underground through the Dark and Middle Ages (at least in Europe), and then reemerges in the wake of the Renaissance before taking its final lap at today's Olympic games. Along the way, it kicks away the idea that swimming is just about moving through water, about speed or great feats of aquatic endurance, and shows you how much more it can be. Its history offers a multi-tiered tour through religion, fashion, architecture, sanitation and public health, colonialism, segregation and integration, sexism, sexiness, guts, glory, and much, much more. Unique and compelling, Splash! sweeps across the whole of humankind's swimming history--and just like jumping into a pool on a hot summer's day, it has fun along the way.




Brave in the Water


Book Description

Are you afraid to put your face in the water? So is Diante. He would like to play in the pool with other children. He's not afraid to hang upside down, though, and he's surprised to learn his grandma is. Can Diante help Grandma and become brave in the water?




Contested Waters


Book Description

From nineteenth-century public baths to today's private backyard havens, swimming pools have long been a provocative symbol of American life. In this social and cultural history of swimming pools in the United States, Jeff Wiltse relates how, over the years, pools have served as asylums for the urban poor, leisure resorts for the masses, and private clubs for middle-class suburbanites. As sites of race riots, shrinking swimsuits, and conspicuous leisure, swimming pools reflect many of the tensions and transformations that have given rise to modern America.




The Swimmers


Book Description

NATIONAL BEST SELLER • From the best-selling, award-winning author of The Buddha in the Attic and When the Emperor Was Divine comes a novel about what happens to a group of obsessed recreational swimmers when a crack appears at the bottom of their local pool. This searing, intimate story of mothers and daughters—and the sorrows of implacable loss—is the most commanding and unforgettable work yet from a modern master. The swimmers are unknown to one another except through their private routines (slow lane, medium lane, fast lane) and the solace each takes in their morning or afternoon laps. But when a crack appears at the bottom of the pool, they are cast out into an unforgiving world without comfort or relief. One of these swimmers is Alice, who is slowly losing her memory. For Alice, the pool was a final stand against the darkness of her encroaching dementia. Without the fellowship of other swimmers and the routine of her daily laps she is plunged into dislocation and chaos, swept into memories of her childhood and the Japanese American incarceration camp in which she spent the war. Alice's estranged daughter, reentering her mother's life too late, witnesses her stark and devastating decline.




Strokes of Genius


Book Description

What could be better than diving into cool water on a hot day? In this enormously enjoyable and informative history of swimming, Eric Chaline sums up this most summery of moments with one phrase: pleasure beckons at the water’s edge. Strokes of Genius traces the history of swimming from the first civilizations to its current worldwide popularity as a sport, fitness pastime, and leisure activity. Chaline explores swimming’s role in ritual, early trade and manufacturing, warfare, and medicine, before describing its transformation in the early modern period into a leisure activity and a competitive sport—the necessary precursors that have made it the most common physical pastime in the developed world. The book celebrates the physicality and sensuality of swimming—attributes that Chaline argues could have contributed to the evolution of the human species. Swimming, like other disciplines that use repetitive movements to train the body and quiet the mind, is also a means of spiritual awakening—a personal journey of discovery. Swimming has attained the status of a cultural marker, denoting eroticism, leisure, endurance, adventure, exploration, and excellence. Strokes of Genius shows that there is not a single story of human swimming, but many currents that merge, diverge, and remerge. Chaline argues that swimming will become particularly important as we look toward a warmer future in which our survival may depend on our ability to adapt to life in an aquatic world.




Topsy and Tim: Learn to Swim


Book Description

Topsy and Tim are always finding fun adventures in the real world, and this story is reassuring for young children having first experiences of their own. Going to the swimming pool for the first time can be daunting but Topsy and Tim are having fun! Follow the twins on their adventures as they have lessons, learn to swim without their armbands and take part in a swimming competition. A trusted and well-loved pair who can help guide parents and children through 'first experiences', Topsy and Tim books have been beautifully updated with contemporary artwork. Topsy & Tim remain instantly recognisable to parents while in a fresh style that will appeal to a new generation of fans. Re-launching in April 2008 with the bestselling titles Learning to Swim, The New Baby, Start School, Go on an Aeroplane, Go Green and Have a Birthday Party these wonderful books deserve a place on the bookshelves of the next generation.




The History of Swimming


Book Description

They entered the world just five minutes apart, twins swimming out of the womb together, already arguing about who got to lead the way. They grew up together, best friends with rhyming names. They even went to the same college — where one of them had a nervous breakdown, and the other didn't. Grown-up, one of them became a suicidal drunk, the other a success. Now, one is missing, and the other has just three days to find him. It really happened. The History of Swimming details Kim Powers' frantic search for his twin brother Tim who disappears from Manhattan one weekend while in his late 20s. Kim almost mystically imagines that the clues to Tim's whereabouts have been planted in a series of letters written by Tim over the years. Now, Kim uses the letters as a sort of roadmap that takes him to Texas, the setting of their greatest triumphs and tragedies. At the small Texas college where many of these events occurred, Kim falls in with two eccentric traveling companions who guide him on the last leg of his quest, driving through the night to the one final place where Tim might be.