"This is the first book that focuses on Benjamin Franklin as a swimmer. Franklin thought swimming a valuable activity and swam whenever he could wherever he was. We can see Franklin's personality emerge through the lens of swimming, which offered him entrée into London society as a young man. The book includes excerpts from the journal of Benjamin Franklin Bache, Franklin's grandson"--
"This is the first book that focuses on Benjamin Franklin as a swimmer. Franklin thought swimming a valuable activity and swam whenever he could wherever he was. We can see Franklin's personality emerge through the lens of swimming, which offered him entrée into London society as a young man. The book includes excerpts from the journal of Benjamin Franklin Bache, Franklin's grandson"--
A deep dive into the history of aquatics that exposes centuries-old tensions of race, gender, and power at the root of many contemporary swimming controversies. Shifting Currents is an original and comprehensive history of swimming. It examines the tension that arose when non-swimming northerners met African and Southeast Asian swimmers. Using archaeological, textual, and art-historical sources, Karen Eva Carr shows how the water simultaneously attracted and repelled these northerners—swimming seemed uncanny, related to witchcraft and sin. Europeans used Africans’ and Native Americans’ swimming skills to justify enslaving them, but northerners also wanted to claim water’s power for themselves. They imagined that swimming would bring them health and demonstrate their scientific modernity. As Carr reveals, this unresolved tension still sexualizes women’s swimming and marginalizes Black and Indigenous swimmers today. Thus, the history of swimming offers a new lens through which to gain a clearer view of race, gender, and power on a centuries-long scale.
Ben Franklin was the most famous American in the entire world during colonial times. No wonder! After all, the man could do just about anything. Why, he was an author and an athlete and a patriot and a scientist and an inventor to boot. He even found a way to steal the lightning right out of the sky. Is such a thing possible? Is it. Take a look inside and find Ben busy at work on every spread. Then find out how he used his discovery about lightning to make people's lives safer. In an inventive way, Rosalyn Schanzer brings us a brilliant and ever-curious American original.
Choose a stroke and get paddling through the human history of swimming! 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.
Explores the nature and appeal of swimming, from the history of the strokes to aspects of modern Olympic competition, as well as the author's personal experiences and milestones in the sport.
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is one of America's most famous memoirs. In this text, Ben Franklin shares his life story and details his attempts to build a life of good habits and virtues. His plan for self-improvement was one of the first "self help" books and his role as a founder of the United States is given a personal perspective. Xist Publishing is a digital-first publisher. Xist Publishing creates books for the touchscreen generation and is dedicated to helping everyone develop a lifetime love of reading, no matter what form it takes
Michael Phelps had already competed in four Olympic Games and won more Olympic medals than any other athlete, but in 2016 he decided to compete one last time. At the Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, superstar swimmer Phelps won six more medals, bringing him to a total of twenty-eight Olympic medals in his career. After years of training, Phelps says he's finally ready to retire and spend more time with his family. Learn all about Phelps's incredible career, how he trained to become the greatest Olympian of all time, and what he'll do now that he's not spending so much time in the pool.
