Name: Why We Swim
ISBN: 9781616207861

Bonnie Tsui

A Best Book of the Season: BuzzFeed “A fascinating and beautifully written love letter to water. I was enchanted by this book." —Rebecca Skloot, bestselling author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks An immersive, unforgettable, and eye-opening perspective on swimming—and on human behavior itself. We swim in freezing Arctic waters and piranha-infested rivers to test our limits. We swim for pleasure, for exercise, for healing. But 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 twenty-first century, swimming is 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 about water—despite its dangers—seduces us and why we come back to it again and again.

Why We Swim

Stephanie

I am a nearly religious swimmer, though I have never done it competitively and I had not swam regularly for 10 years before starting again about two years ago (I have been swimming nearly daily since then). But no matter, I have always loved the water and being in the water.

I found something very touching in the stories Tsui has chosen as her case studies. As sappy as it sounds, this book gave me such a warm feeling. I loved learning about the experiences of other swimmers and all the small trivia surrounding each different approach to swimming. I also loved that it reminded me to slow down when swimming breaststroke, that that is the beauty of the stroke.

I am a nearly religious swimmer, though I have never done it competitively and I had not swam regularly for 10 years before starting again about two years ago (I have been swimming nearly daily since then). But no matter, I have always loved the water and being in the water.

I found something very touching in the stories Tsui has chosen as her case studies. As sappy as it sounds, this book gave me such a warm feeling. I loved learning about the experiences of other swimmers and all the small trivia surrounding each different approach to swimming. I also loved that it reminded me to slow down when swimming breaststroke, that that is the beauty of the stroke.

And hey, a mention of Rem Koolhaas so.

Alan

I'd recently read Why We Sleep, which was an excellent dive into an area that is so much more interesting than I'd expected. I was hoping this might be as illuminating. It was not.

There's no interesting insight or analysis or gripping stories. Instead this is a series of disconnected conversations with people the author has swam with.

There's one story about an Icelandic human seal which is semi-interesting. Once that's over the rest of the book starts to feel like the author searching unsuccessfully for something interesting to justify writing a whole book. She goes through history to find famous people who liked swimming and then set that as maybe the reason they were successful. Implying, in an extreme, that whilst Einstein couldn't swim, he thought walks were helpful and liked to be by the sea, so that's sort of an interesting story about swimming, right?

It's not the style of writing that's the problem, but the content. This book does not answer Why We Swim; instead it's a rambling unstructured set of conversations. That's fine, it can work if the content is great. It's not.

Audrey Kalman

A Best Book of the Season: BuzzFeed * Bustle * San Francisco Chronicle “A fascinating and beautifully written love letter to water. I was enchanted by this book." —Rebecca Skloot, bestselling author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks An immersive, unforgettable, and eye-opening perspective on swimming—and on human behavior itself. We swim in freezing Arctic waters and piranha-infested rivers to test our limits. We swim for pleasure, for exercise, for healing. But 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 twenty-first century, swimming is 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 about water—despite its dangers—seduces us and why we come back to it again and again.

Alexia

Since February, after having had the chance to enjoy the pleasure of losing myself in the waters of a pool, I’ve been craving getting back to swimming, this time not as a competitive sport, but as a therapeutic means to connect with my inner self. And then the pandemic broke in March.
In Why We Swim, Tsui manages to capture the pleasure and detachment from the outer world this antique activity provides.
Here are some quotes where you can see what I’m talking about:

🌊 “For me, the story of swimming is also one of adaptation. We work to inhabit this element [...]. For most of us today [...], survival as motivation, though, has given way to sport. Competition is how we can experience the adventure of assessing and moving through an attractive but decidedly inhospitable environment. It is only with sustained effort that we can master it."

🌊”Three decades of swimming, of chasing equilibrium, have kept my head firmly above water. Swimming can enable survival in ways beyond the physical."

🌊”I begin to realize that the physical repetition can be a kind of meditation that transcends the simple goal of winning a race."

🌊”She realized that she could lose a race and still have it be a perfect swim [...], how failure is a critical stepping-stone for success— and how not being afraid to fail helped her to believe that she could accomplish the goals she set."

🌊”Rush, and you go slower. It’s the paradox of breaststroke. Ease up, though, and you stretch, like taffy. Cut the quick bobs, and you’re pulled along, effortless, smooth as the hull of a boat cutting through early morning glass on a river. That frog kick, working without splash underneath the surface, is your secret propeller.
[...]
In a modern world that is so obsessed with speed, it’s a good reminder of what’s possible when we slow down."

Benjamin Earl

Francine Corry

Kerry McHugh West

Elena Favret

Sonia Grgas

André Silva

Pamela Koh

Juliana

Demi k

Sasha Lukavchenko

A Time Magazine Must-Read Book of 2020 A Best Book of the Season: BuzzFeed * Bustle * San Francisco Chronicle A Best Book of the Year: NPR's Book Concierge * Washington Independent Review of Books “A fascinating and beautifully written love letter to water. I was enchanted by this book." —Rebecca Skloot, bestselling author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks An immersive, unforgettable, and eye-opening perspective on swimming—and on human behavior itself. We swim in freezing Arctic waters and piranha-infested rivers to test our limits. We swim for pleasure, for exercise, for healing. But 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 twenty-first century, swimming is 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 that seduces us, despite its dangers, and why we come back to it again and again.