SPLASH

A lively history of one of the world's most popular activities - swimming - from man's first dip in what is now the driest spot on earth to the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

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 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo - where, critically, swimming will once again be among the most high-profile of all events.

But swimming is also about more than itself, more than simply moving through the water, more than speed or great feats of aquatic endurance or the terror of the bottomless deep. It's part of the churning continuum of time - part of history, part of life. Stretch "swimming" out to its largest dimension, and 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.

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. He began swimming competitively when he was five years old, continued through college, then coached for seven years.