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What could be better than diving into cool water on a hot day? In this enormously enjoyable and informative history of swimming, Eric Chaline sums up this most summery of moments with the phrase: Pleasure beckons at the water's edge. Strokes of Genius traces the history of swimming from the first civilizations to its current worldwide popularity as a sport, fitness pastime, and leisure activity. Chaline explores swimming's role in ritual, early trade and manufacturing, warfare, and medicine, before describing its transformation in the early modern period into a leisure activity and a competitive sport--the necessary precursors that have made it the most common physical pastime in the developed world. The book celebrates the physicality and sensuality of swimming - attributes that Chaline argues could have contributed to the evolution of the human species.