SPLASH! 10,000 Years of Swimming
SPLASH! 10,000 Years of Swimming is a book written by Howard Means published in June 2020.
Contents
Synopsis
From man’s first recorded dip into what’s now the driest spot on earth to the splashing, sparkling pool party in your backyard, humans have been getting wet for 10,000 years. And for most of modern history, swimming has caused a ripple that touches us all–the heroes and the ordinary folk; the real and the mythic.
Splash! dives into Egypt, winds through ancient Greece and Rome, flows mostly underground through the Dark and Middle Ages (at least in Europe), and then reemerges in the wake of the Renaissance before taking its final lap at today’s Olympic games. Along the way, it kicks away the idea that swimming is just about moving through water, about speed or great feats of aquatic endurance, and shows you how much more it can be. Its history offers a multi-tiered tour through religion, fashion, architecture, sanitation and public health, colonialism, segregation and integration, sexism, sexiness, guts, glory, and much, much more.
Unique and compelling, Splash! sweeps across the whole of humankind’s swimming history–and just like jumping into a pool on a hot summer’s day, it has fun along the way.
World Open Water Swimming Offering of the Year Nomination
Splash! was nominated for the 2020 World Open Water Swimming Offering of the Year as part of the annual WOWSA Awards with the following nomination:
Open water swimming is considered the newest niche of aquatic sports, with its introduction at the Summer Olympic Games coming in 2008. However, mankind has been swimming in oceans, seas, lakes, rivers and bays for millennia. Howard Means takes readers of Splash! 10,000 Years of Swimming through the long history of open water swimming from mankind's earliest ventures beyond the shorelines to the upcoming Tokyo Olympics. Filled with wit and humor, Means tells the fascinating history of how, where and why humans swim - a sport that has been transformed during the COVID-19 pandemic with global closures of pools and a resurrection of people flocking to open water venues. For researching and teaching swimmers how their chosen aquatic activities came to be, for sharing swimming stories from Egypt, Greece and Rome through the Dark Ages, Middle Ages and Renaissance, and for explaining how swimming interacts with religion, fashion, public health, segregation, sexism and athletic glory, Splash! 10,000 Years of Swimming by Howard Means is a worthy nominee for the 2020 World Open Water Swimming Offering of the Year.
Howard Means Professional Career and Books
- He was Senior Writer for Washingtonian magazine from 1977-1982 and Senior Editor from 1989-2000.
- Between 1982-1989, he was Critic at Large and an editorial board member for the Orlando Sentinel and an op-ed columnist for King Features Syndicate.
- At the Washingtonian, he won three William Allen White Medals for feature writing.
- biography of Colin Powell, a selection of the History Book Club
- Money & Power: The History of Business, companion piece to the CNBC documentary of the same name and translated into Chinese, Japanese, and many other languages.
- a novel, CSA, optioned for an ABC mini-series
- The Banana Sculptor, the Purple Lady, and the All-Night Swimmer, studies in eccentricity, co-authored with Susan Sheehan.
- The Avenger Takes His Place: Andrew Johnson and the 45 Days That Changed the Nation, also a featured selection of the History Book Club.
- Johnny Appleseed: The Man, the Myth, and the American Story.
- He also assisted in the writing of numerous books, including best-selling memoirs by Michael Deaver, Robert Baer, Louis Freeh, and George Tenet.
- He is now at work on a look back at the Kent State shootings: May 4, 1970.
- SPLASH! 10,000 Years of Swimming
