Why We Swim

4.5 | 1,448 ratings

Price: 23.88

Last update: 11-13-2024

About this item

Humans, unlike other animals that are drawn to water, are not natural-born swimmers. We must be taught. Our evolutionary ancestors learned for survival; now in the 21st century, we swim in freezing Arctic waters and piranha-infested rivers to test our limits. Swimming is an introspective and silent sport in a chaotic and noisy age; it’s therapeutic for both the mind and body; and it's an adventurous way to get from point A to point B. It's also one route to that elusive, ecstatic state of flow. These reasons, among many others, make swimming one of the most popular activities in the world.

Why We Swim is propelled by stories of Olympic champions, a Baghdad swim club that meets in Saddam Hussein's palace pool, modern-day Japanese samurai swimmers, and even an Icelandic fisherman who improbably survives a wintry six-hour swim after a shipwreck. New York Times contributor Bonnie Tsui, a swimmer herself, dives into the deep, from the San Francisco Bay to the South China Sea, investigating what it is about water - despite its dangers - that seduces us, tempting us to come back to it again and again.

Kindle Customer

Wow

Reviewed in the United States on August 26, 2024

This is a well researched book. I learned several things from it. I can swim. I don’t very much. I may return to it because of this book. I loved it!

Tom Frankel

Why we swim, explained

Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2020

This is a fun, informative book. Ms. Tsui does an excellent job of mixing her personal story with pieces of swimming history. Her personal part makes this book very real for anyone who is a dedicated swimmer. We struggle with good days and bad, health and physical challenges, emotional aspects of swimming, and how to fit our swimming routines into our lives. Ms. Tsui demonstrates how she has accomplished this task.
I appreciated the fact that this book was not presented as a story about a champion swimmer but clearly a very good one who was not reluctant to share the doubts that swimmers experience.
This was a very good read, ironically when pools are closed because of COVID-19. It makes swimmers long for the post swim feelings that the author expresses.

Bestgb

Close Encounters of the Aquatic Kind

Reviewed in the United States on May 28, 2020

Bonnie Tsui loves to swim, and her book is a big-hearted embrace of humans in water. Ranging from the pool to open ocean, she hunts down and interviews famous or unusual members of the swimming fraternity. Some topics of interest include: the benefits of cold water swimming - cold as in knocking out ice miles in Arctic waters; the centuries old Japanese practice of samurai swimming; the psychology of long distance ocean swimmers. This is interspersed with accounts of Tsui’s own experiences as a competitive swimmer, an ocean swimmer and someone who’s forged stronger family ties by sharing time in the water.

She also describes the mental states and benefits of swimming, where you can be both locked into the present moment and slip outside of standard clock time. An enjoyable, informative read for those who swim and those want to know more about the enduring human impulse to return to the substance from whence we sprang.

Amazon Customer

Phenomenal book!

Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2020

For anyone who is a swimmer or who grew up swimming, this is a must-read. Bonnie Tsui is an amazing writer and her "in the water" life experiences adds in insiders view to the beautiful world of swimming! The historical & anthropological stories are simply wonderful. Who knew that samurai warriors were required to be such excellent swimmers?! As a life-long competitive swimmer for over 60 years, this book has rejuvenated my joy for swimming!

A. Reviewer

LOVED this book!

Reviewed in the United States on August 15, 2021

I don’t often buy books, I usually get them from the library. I started reading this one and decided I had to buy it for my personal collection. I am an avid lifelong swimmer and this book is such a beautiful meditation on the sport. One of the most joyful books I have read on a very long time. Thank you, Bonnie Tsui!
I didn’t understand some of the negative reviews as someone said the author is self centered as she describes her personal history in diving for abalone. I’m guessing that person must not have read beyond the first chapter. The author starts out by telling her personal connection to swimming, and goes on to tell the stories of many other swimmers, including interviews and related history, situations, and culture.
This is now a favorite book in my collection and one I expect to pick up and read again.

J. Buckner

I wanted to like it but didn't

Reviewed in the United States on October 26, 2020

As a 5X/wk swimmer, it seemed to be a book that I would like. I'm favorably disposed to books such as this; for example, Murakami's book on running was also a book of reflections and thoughts on the activity itself. But I marked this down for four reasons.
First, in terms of readability, I found "Why We Swim" to be poorly organized. In a chapter that began with relating stories of an American soldier in Iraq swimming in a palace pool, there are sections that discuss swimming teams in England in the early 19th century, international drowning statistics, and the experience of a kid in Madagascar learning to swim. Taken as a whole, the book struck me as a collection of paragraphs tossed together with very tenuous connections.
The biggest strike against the book in at the beginning of Chpt 8, when Ms. Tsui says, "Throughout the Progressive Era, swimming pools were places where blacks, whites, and immigrants swam together, regardless of race, in the interest of hygience, writes the historian Jeff Wiltse..." This is just wrong. I didn't read Mr. Wiltse's book, but it's not just wrong, but seriously, factually incorrect and misleading, just one example being the deadliest race riot in Chicago's history happened in the summer of 1919, when a Black teenager mistakenly crossed an 'aqua border' of a Chicago beach and was stoned and drowned by whites infuriated by the innocent transgression. If anyone thinks that Blacks and whites were swimming together in pools in, say, Macon, Georgia, or, say, Cleveland, Ohio, I encourage them to read Isabell Wilkerson's "The Warmth of Other Suns" (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award among others too numerous to list) for a stunning account of Jim Crow laws, the Great Migration, and the receptions received north of the Mason Dixon Line.
I didn't care at all for Ms. Tsui's slobbering over "Nihon eiho."
Finally, and just a small bone to pick, but it was depressing to read that Ms. Tsui cannot read the language of her parents, and I say this as a white American who has diligently studied Chinese for the past quarter of a century. I wish that Ms. Tsui would spend an equal amount of time and effort learning characters as she does swimming.

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