Virtual Event: Bonnie Tsui

Harvard Book Store's virtual event series welcomes New York Times contributor BONNIE TSUI—author of American Chinatown: A People’s History of Five Neighborhoods—for a discussion of her latest book, Why We Swim. She will be joined in conversation by celebrated author CAROLINE PAUL.

About Why We Swim

We swim in freezing Arctic waters and piranha-infested rivers to test our limits. We swim for pleasure, for exercise, for healing. But humans, unlike other animals that are drawn to water, are not natural-born swimmers. We must be taught. Our evolutionary ancestors learned for survival; now, in the twenty-first century, swimming is one of the most popular activities in the world.

Why We Swim is propelled by stories of Olympic champions, a Baghdad swim club that meets in Saddam Hussein’s palace pool, modern-day Japanese samurai swimmers, and even an Icelandic fisherman who improbably survives a wintry six-hour swim after a shipwreck. New York Times contributor Bonnie Tsui, a swimmer herself, dives into the deep, from the San Francisco Bay to the South China Sea, investigating what about water—despite its dangers—seduces us and why we come back to it again and again.

Praise for Why We Swim

“A beautifully written love letter to water and a fascinating story. I was enchanted.” —Rebecca Skloot, bestselling author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

“The only thing better than reading Bonnie Tsui’s writing about swimming is swimming itself—and both are sublime. Why We Swim is an aquatic tour de force, a captivating story filled with adventure, meditation, and celebration.” —Susan Casey, New York Times bestselling author of The Wave and Voices in the Ocean

“This is a jewel of a book, a paean to the wonders of water and our place within it.” —James Nestor, author of Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us about Ourselves