Bonnie Tsui’s Why We Swim, an enthusiastic and thoughtful work mixing history, journalism and elements of memoir, is ostensibly focused on those who do swim, rather than those who don’t. Tsui sets out to answer her title’s question with a compassionate understanding of how that mind game stops some and a curiosity about how and why it seduces others.

... succeeds brilliantly.

Profiles of Olympic swimmers, long distance swimmers, and others who swim in brutally cold water for therapeutic reasons punctuate the text, in addition to Tsui’s own lifelong experiences in water. In all, Why We Swim is a celebration of the many varieties of joy that swimming brings to our oxygen-breathing species. That we choose to swim, knowing the danger, can only be explained by the pleasure it brings..

Deep within this book is this hint of a personal family memoir as told through the great swimming escapades of her life.

... closely researched and entertaining.

... a thoughtful and meditative contemplation, and an exploration and memoir about her own relationship with water.

... eloquent.

Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of 'an unflinching giving-over to an element' and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).

...[an] eclectic, well-crafted survey.