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. An...Read more
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.
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Howard Means is the author or co-author of ten books, most recently 67 Shots: Kent State and the End of American Innocence, currently being developed as a feature length film by Everyman Pictures (Jay...
