这是一本深入了解水上运动的历史，揭示了许多当代游泳争议的根源，即数百年来种族丶性别和权力之间的紧张关系。

本书是一部原创全面性探讨游泳的历史，其考察了不游泳的北方人遇到非洲和东南亚的游泳者时产生的紧张关系。作者透过文字叙述丶考古史料和艺术史文献，共同来呈述水是如何同时吸引和排斥这些北方人的——游泳似乎是件不可思议之事，并与巫术和罪恶有关。欧洲人利用非洲人和美洲原住民的游泳技巧来证明奴役他们的正当性，但北方人也想为自己争取水的力量。他们想像游泳会带给他们健康并展现出科学现代性。

‘A fascinating story about swimmers and swimming across the world from antiquity to the present. In exploring the many ways that swimming has served as a marker of cultural and social difference, archaeologist and historian Karen Carr has, in effect, produced a sweeping history of world civilizations from a new vantage point. Swimmers and non-swimmers alike will find much to enjoy in this learned, ambitious and lively book.’

– Nigel Nicholson, Walter Mintz Professor of Greek, Latin, and Ancient

Mediterranean Studies and Humanities, Reed College ‘Karen Eva Carr’s expansive and engaging volume traces a complex narrative about the “art” of swimming in world history. Carr shows how different cultures organized themselves against each other in relation to swimming practices . . . She demonstrates the recurrence of fundamental cultural anxieties about the water and shows how these ancient patterns continue in our ambivalently water-focused present. As seas rise in the twenty-first century, we should heed the lessons of this rich history.’

– Steve Mentz, St. John’s University, author of Ocean and Shipwreck Modernity

关於作者

Karen Eva Carr is 是美国波特兰州立大学历史系的荣誉退休副教授，之前出版过Vandals to Visigoths: Rural Settlement Patterns in Early Medieval Spain (2002)一书。