Author(s): Howard Means

Dance & Sport

A global history of swimming, from humankind's first dip in what is now the driest spot on earth to the 2020 Olympics.

Splash! weaves a 10,000-year-old tale that begins in a bone-dry cave in the remote southwest corner of Egypt, winds its way through ancient Greece and Rome, flows mostly underground through the Dark and Middle Ages, and then reemerges in the wake of the Renaissance before ending on the runway of the Tokyo Olympics. But swimming is also about more than feats of aquatic endurance or the terror of the bottomless deep. Its history offers a multi-tiered tour through religion, fashion low and high, architecture, sanitation and public health, colonialism, segregation and integration, sexism, sexiness, guts, glory and much, much more. Unique and compulsive, Splash! sweeps across the whole of humankind's swimming history, with great wit and humour.

Review: This fascinating history of how, where and why humans swim...is perfect reading for those missing a splash-about during the lockdown. -- Katy Guest * Guardian *
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
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...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 author of 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

Contents: 1: Gods, Humans, and the Aquatic Ape 2: Swimming's Golden Age 3: First There Was Swimming; Then There Was None 4: Rediscovering a Lost Art 5: Swimming 2.0 6: A Frog in Every Tub 7: Diving in for Dollars and Pounds 8: Climb Every Mountain, Swim Every Sea 9: The Great Swimming Cover-Up 10: An Aussie Wrecking Ball Goes Rogue 11: Nylon, WWII, James Bond, and the G-String 12: Swimming Together, Swimming Alone 13: The Last Taboo 14: Growing Pains 15: The Fastest Swimmer Ever 16: Is Enough Ever Enough?

Author Biography: 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 Roach) and Little Stranger Picture (Tina Fey & Jeff Richmond). He began swimming competitively when he was five years old, continued throughout college, then coached for seven years. Swimming continues to define his life, and he practises it in pools, rivers, lakes, quarries and oceans.