Splash!: 10,000 Years of Swimming

by Howard Means

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780306845666
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	06/02/2020
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	310,155
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Howard Means is the author or co-author of ten books, most recently 67 Shots: Kent State and the End of American Innocence (Da Capo, 2016). Hailed by the Christian Science Monitor as "one of the most heartbreaking books in memory," 67 Shots is being developed as a feature length film by Everyman Pictures (Jay Roach) and Little Stranger Picture (Tina Fey & Jeff Richmond). Means' previous book, Johnny Appleseed: The Man, the Myth, the American Story (Simon & Schuster, 2011), was featured on NPR and in the weekend Wall Street Journal, and also optioned for TV and/or film.


Prior to turning full-time to book-length works, Means was senior editor at Washingtonian magazine, an op-ed columnist for King Features Syndicate, a daily journalist, and in the distant past, a schoolteacher. He began swimming competitively when he was five years old, continued through college, then coached for seven years. Swimming continues to define his life: Pools, rivers, lakes, quarries, oceans are his natural medium. Writing Splash! has been a labor of love.

Table of Contents

Prologue: Once Upon a Time in Egypt… 1

1 Gods, Humans, and the Aquatic Ape 13

2 Swimming's Golden Age 27

3 First There Was Swimming; Then There Was None 39

4 Rediscovering a Lost Art 57

5 Swimming 2.0 73

6 A Frog in Every Tub 89

7 Diving in for Dollars and Pounds 107

8 Climb Every Mountain, Swim Every Sea 123

9 The Great Swimming Cover-Up 141

10 An Aussie Wrecking Ball Goes Rogue 157

11 Nylon, WWII, James Bond, and the G-String 171

12 Swimming Together, Swimming Alone 187

13 The Last Taboo 205

14 Growing Pains 223

15 The Fastest Swimmer Ever 239

16 Is Enough Ever Enough? 261

Epilogue: My Watery Life 285

Acknowledgments 293

Sources 295

Index 313

Editorial Reviews

02/10/2020

With wit and rich detail, avid swimmer Means (67 Shots) documents the history of swimming, from Earth’s first “one-cell creatures,” which began life in water, through “aquatic apes,” who first mastered the “rivers, deltas, and coastal waters,” to today’s competitive swimmers such as Michael Phelps. Means argues that to take a dip has social, political, cultural, and religious implications—for the Greeks and Romans it was a celebration to be done nude, but in the Middle Ages and more Puritanical time periods, swimming was considered an abomination or a sign of witchcraft and thus forbidden. In the 20th century, Means writes, financial and racial divides have put swim lessons out of reach for many African-Americans. With painstakingly researched historical references, Means humorously imagines a Roman swimming pool the day before Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE: “a gaggle of indefatigable kids list in a noisy game of Marcus Antonius (Marco Polo, before there was a Marco Polo to name it after).” He intersperses his book with the musings of poets and inventors such as Lord Byron and Ben Franklin, along with anecdotes of athletes such as Annette Kellerman, a turn-of-the-20th-century Australian competitive swimmer. Means’s delightful history of humans in water simultaneously educates and entertains. (June)

Publishers Weekly

"What could be more audacious an act than the attempt to tell the entire 10,000-year story of swimming in a single volume? But that is exactly what Howard Means's Splash! aims to do. Splash! is an exuberant and sweeping cultural history of the sport and a thoughtful meditation on its possible origins and humankind's larger relationship to water itself. From the first evidence of swimming in Middle Eastern desert cave art to "aquatic heroism" in ancient Roman warfare, to a visit with the uber-stars and superhuman speeds of the 21st century—Means takes us on a breezy, easily readable journey across time and space to help us even to begin to understand why we took to the water in the first place and why we still insist on splashing about in it today. A great gift for the swimmer in you or in your life."—Julie Checkoway, New York Times bestselling authorof The Three-Year Swim Club

"Howard Means' Splash! has raised the bar for the 'swimoir'! He takes masterful strokes through 10,000 years of the cultural and social history of swimming and makes the strongest case yet written on why everyone should swim."—Bruce Wigo, former CEO & President, International Swimming Hall of Fame

"Splash! is an incredible book—the most amazing stories of anything and everything you wanted to know about the world and culture of swimming and its history. I loved every page!"—Rowdy Gaines, three-time Olympic Gold Medalist and Olympic television swimming analyst

"With wit and rich detail,... Means's delightful history of humans in water simultaneously educates and entertains."—Publishers Weekly

"A nimble social history of humans at play in water... Devoted swimmers will want to splash about in this entertaining narrative."—Kirkus Reviews

"A thoughtful,... comprehensive, well-researched homage to swimming as a component of survival, leisure activity, and competitive sport"—Booklist

"Splash is a tour de force across the history of swimming... One of the better explanations of swimming I've ever read.... A joy to read. It should be on every swimmer's reading list and in every swim bag alongside cap, goggles, fins, and paddles."—SwimSwam Magazine

From the Publisher

04/01/2020

From the earliest days of recorded history, water has been a constant and essential partner for humankind. Means (67 Shots) now reveals the fascinating story of how we interact with water through swimming, from Egyptian cave paintings of dog paddlers created almost 10,000 years ago to modern-day Olympians, their aerodynamic swimwear and race times measured in hundredths of seconds. Religious beliefs, gender disparity, segregation, architecture, and fashion are also part of the history of swimming, as are milestones like the birth of the bikini and crossing the English Channel. Means packs an astonishing amount of information into one concise time line, with his own experiences and observations connecting different norms and eras. Sports fans who may have only a passing interest in swimming will find this an unexpectedly absorbing overview, with plenty of unforgettable characters and intriguing research. VERDICT An all-encompassing, yet highly accessible history of one of humankind's most elemental and popular activities, this title is recommended for everyone from sports fans to historians. For a sport generally underrepresented in library collections, this is a superb account of swimming's long and remarkable history.—Janet Davis, Darien P.L., CT

Library Journal

2020-03-15
A nimble social history of humans at play in water.

Swimming is a sport, an art, a form of meditation—and, by former University of Virginia swimming champion Means’ account, very nearly a biological imperative, an expression of our kinship to critters that crawled out of the sea to make their homes on land. Those “fish-human comparisons” are intriguing: Put a human in water that’s heated to 90 degrees, and you relax their heart; “knock the temperature down 10 percent or more,” and you’re in territory that brings relief from ailments such as asthma and rheumatism, to say nothing of bliss. “No wonder whales often seem more at peace with themselves than we humans do,” writes the author. Given the antique connection with the sea, it’s intriguing that a cave in desert Egypt, central to Michael Ondaatje’s novel The English Patient, delivers the first documentation of humans afloat on the sea. Means delivers a lovely portrait of the zaftig Australian swimmer Annette Kellerman, “the woman who first liberated swimwear from the tyranny of Victorian morality”—but then, years later, sniffed of the newly invented bikini that “only two women in a million can wear it.” The author also incorporates bits and pieces of cultural and sports history, such as early long-distance competitions and the rules of Olympic swimming. But some of the best parts of his book are memoir, as when he recounts a personal best of underwater swimming that took in 75 meters, surfacing only for fear that he’d pass out: “Water is the wrong medium for fainting.” It’s surprising that two pop-history books on swimming appear within two months of each other—the other is Bonnie Tsui’s Why We Swim—but neither crowds out the other.

Devoted swimmers will want to splash about in this entertaining narrative.

Kirkus Reviews