Swimming is, by our human definition, a constant state of not drowning.
In Why We Swim, New York Times contributor and swimmer Bonnie Tsui writes about the art of swimming, profiled swimming enthusiasts and long-distance swimmers such as Lewis Pugh, Lynne Cox, Kim Chambers, Diana Nyad, Gertrude Ederle, Olympic champions such as Michael Phelps, Katie Ledecky, Dara Torres.
She also writes about everyday people such as a Baghdad swim club that meets in Saddam Hussein’s former palace pool, modern-day Japanese samurai swimmers, and an Icelandic fisherman who improbably survives a wintry six-hour swim after a shipwreck. Bonnie investigates what it is about water that seduces us, and why we come back to it again and again.