Contested Waters - by Jeff Wiltse (Paperback)

About the Book

Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America

Book Synopsis

From nineteenth-century public baths to today's private backyard havens, swimming pools have long been a provocative symbol of American life. In this social and cultural history of swimming pools in the United States, Jeff Wiltse relates how, over the years, pools have served as asylums for the urban poor, leisure resorts for the masses, and private clubs for middle-class suburbanites. As sites of race riots, shrinking swimsuits, and conspicuous leisure, swimming pools reflect many of the tensions and transformations that have given rise to modern America.

Review Quotes

[A] well-written account. . . . [Wiltse's] myriad primary sources are particularly impressive. . . . Succeeds on all accounts."--Journal of American History

An expertly researched and well-written new book. . . [that] gives a detailed overview of how race played a major role in defining one of America's favorite leisure pastimes."--Journal of Blacks in Higher Education

Carefully researched and well-written . . . a welcome beginning to a national story of public recreation."--American Historical Review

In Contested Waters, historian Jeff Wiltse argues that the nation's contentious history of racism, class conflict and gender inequality can be captured by chronicling the rise and fall of municipal pools in northern American cities. And he makes a compelling case. . . . [In] this extremely readable narrative. . . . Wiltse persuasively shows that there are some very serious consequences to how Americans play together--and when and why they decide that they won't."--Washington Post Book World

Incisive."--New Yorker

Intelligent, compelling social history."--Atlantic Monthly

It quickly becomes clear that Wiltse's Contested Waters isn't a dreary historical catalog of shapes and styles of swimming pools vast and small. It's the colorful story of America's municipal swimming pools in the 19th and 20th centuries. Against that backdrop it becomes a story of America. It's all here: a sense of this country's benevolence, its community relations, civic wars, social strata, sexuality and sexism as well as our capacity for having a good time. Chronicled along with these are our ill-feeling prejudice, ignorance and racial strife. . . . [Contested Waters offers] a good course in America. All its traits, fine and lamentable are found here--the most vivid being, alas, our stinking racism."--Dick Cavett, New York Times Book Review

Provides valuable insight on the evolving attitudes toward race, class, gender, and community in the US. . . . An excellent resource, well researched and well written."--CHOICE

That rare book that answers questions so interesting and so important that one is surprised they have not been asked before. . . . Wiltse's research is thorough, and thoroughly documented. . . . Wiltse has done a remarkable job of finding and synthesizing a large body of material, most of it never considered seriously before, and the narrative he presents is fresh and important."--Magill's Literary Annual 2008

This is well done, clearly written, thoroughly researched history, and it effectively makes important points about the tensions that confounded America during the Civil Rights movement. . . . Wiltse uses the municipal swimming pool as a fascinating window onto social changes and urban tensions across the 20th century."--Publishers Weekly