Author(s): Lynn Sherr

Contemporary Thought

In this buoyant blend of memoir, cultural history, sports psychology, and travel writing, an award-winning journalist and writer shares her enduring love for swimming. "Swim" is a celebration of swimming and the effect it has on our lives. It's an inquiry into why we swim - the lure, the hold, the timeless magic of being in the water. It's a look at how swimming has changed over the millennia; it's an ancient activity - and how it's becoming more social than solitary today. It's about our relationship with the water, with our fishy forebears, and with the costumes that we wear. You'll even find a few songs to sing when you push out those next laps. From the biology of swimming to the fame of Esther Williams, the best swimming beaches to the training routines of Olympians, from the weird double-jointedness of some swimmers to the best ways to learn so that anyone can avoid the example of the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who lamented, "Why can't I swim, it seems so very easy?" When his friend, the biographer Edward John Trelawny, said, "because you think you can't", Shelley plunged into Italy's Arno River and dropped like a rock. With Swim, you can avoid that happening to you.