Serendipity

I cannot remember where I first heard about Splash: Great Writing About Swimming (edited by Laurel Blossom), but as soon as I did, I had to go and request it from my beloved BorrowDirect. And since I was looking at an electronic catalog, I could not then resist requesting the appealingly adjacent Splash! A History of Swimwear. (More properly it is a history of 20th-century fashion photography with a swimwear focus, but an interesting book nonetheless.)

Forthwith, Maxine Kumin's "400-Meter Freestyle" and a bit of the illustrated chronology at the back of the swimwear volume: