A husband-and-wife team of popular-culture experts provides a lively celebration of the beach, “nature’s most potent antidepressant.” Len—ek (The Antic Alphabet, 1994) and Bosker, professors of Russian and medicine, respectively, who live in Oregon, are clearly in love with beaches. In this, their latest in a series of popular-culture studies (including one on bathing suits), they have transformed their unabashed passion for sun and sand (or rocks, as it may be) into a romp through the history of beaches, from their ancient geological formation to the environmental and commercial dangers that threaten them today. Along the way, they explore sexuality, sport, architecture, and fashion at the beach. At the heart of their historical narrative is the premise that the beach as we know it today is a recent phenomenon. Here we witness the beach’s gradual transformation from a hostile wilderness’site of conquest, commerce, and tribal practices—to a civilized recreation site. Throughout, the historical narrative is limited to Western cultures, primarily American and European. Chapters often begin with fictional tableaus that lend an intimate feel to the narrative. Throughout, The Beach is filled with fascinating illustrations and photographs of the once-popular bathing machine, assorted swimsuit styles of the past (including the first adhesive brassiere!), and the “Tan-O-Meter,” a gas-pump-shaped tanning-oil dispenser. But for all their mirth, Len—ek and Bosker are serious about the beach’s role in history and its appeal to the human imagination. In the end, they argue, “it is to the beach . . . that we go to reinvent ourselves.” For those readers unable to resist the beach’s appeal, the authors include a highly select list of the world’s hottest and fanciest beach hotels and resorts. Those who ordinarily bike or walk to the local beach will find pleasure and novelty in The Beach, but they’d better look elsewhere for seashore recommendations.
Pub Date: May 25, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88095-7
Page Count: 302
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
The book is not entirely negative; final chapters indicate roads of reversal, before it is too late!
It should come as no surprise that the gifted author of The Sea Around Usand its successors can take another branch of science—that phase of biology indicated by the term ecology—and bring it so sharply into focus that any intelligent layman can understand what she is talking about.
Understand, yes, and shudder, for she has drawn a living portrait of what is happening to this balance nature has decreed in the science of life—and what man is doing (and has done) to destroy it and create a science of death. Death to our birds, to fish, to wild creatures of the woods—and, to a degree as yet undetermined, to man himself. World War II hastened the program by releasing lethal chemicals for destruction of insects that threatened man’s health and comfort, vegetation that needed quick disposal. The war against insects had been under way before, but the methods were relatively harmless to other than the insects under attack; the products non-chemical, sometimes even introduction of other insects, enemies of the ones under attack. But with chemicals—increasingly stronger, more potent, more varied, more dangerous—new chain reactions have set in. And ironically, the insects are winning the war, setting up immunities, and re-emerging, their natural enemies destroyed. The peril does not stop here. Waters, even to the underground water tables, are contaminated; soils are poisoned. The birds consume the poisons in their insect and earthworm diet; the cattle, in their fodder; the fish, in the waters and the food those waters provide. And humans? They drink the milk, eat the vegetables, the fish, the poultry. There is enough evidence to point to the far-reaching effects; but this is only the beginning,—in cancer, in liver disorders, in radiation perils…This is the horrifying story. It needed to be told—and by a scientist with a rare gift of communication and an overwhelming sense of responsibility. Already the articles taken from the book for publication in The New Yorkerare being widely discussed. Book-of-the-Month distribution in October will spread the message yet more widely.
The book is not entirely negative; final chapters indicate roads of reversal, before it is too late!Pub Date: Sept. 27, 1962
ISBN: 061825305X
Page Count: 378
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1962
APPRECIATIONS
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. 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 absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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