The Beach: The History of Paradise on Earth

Why, oh, why do swimmers get "lost" writing about San Francisco? Answer: ? Lencek and Bosker have 11 1/2 pages of bibliography, (including "Haunts of the Black Masseur:The Swimmer as Hero" by Charles Sprawson,published in 1992.) While Sprawson's book focuses on the swimmer through history, and thus touches on PLACES where the swimmers swim, Lencek and Bosker (hererafter "LB") focus on the beaches through history and thus touch on the same beaches and places that Sprawson visits,or in some cases writes about without having visited (his first edition was published in Great Britain)and while Jack London gets ample admiration, the book has a world-wide approach to swimming through the ages---Byronic,English,German,Japanese,American periods are among those explored via word and art.) They may have walked through San Francisco together to reach the Sutro Baths(or never seen them), but they all got lost before placing Fleishhacker Swim Pool on the wrong side of San Francisco Bay. Sprawson:"The great Sutro Baths of San Francisco were founded in 1896 by an engineer who had made his fortune from devising a tunnel to drain the flooded shafts of the silver mines in Nevada.Sutro then turned his aquatic genius to designing the most remarkable pool ever built." LB:"An engineer who had grown wealthy by devising a tunnel for draining the flooded shafts of Nevada silver mines gave San Francisco the equivalent of Mediterranean bathing in oceanside swimming pools.In 1896 he opened Sutro Baths, a remarkable complex situated high above the Pacific. Sprawson:The railway company ran two lines directly to its entrance, from where stairs descended to what was the largest glass-roofed building in existence,situated high above the Pacific,full of palm trees that stretched up to its ceiling, stuffed anacondas, a Tropic beach, restaurants, and in the main amphitheatre, seven separate swimming pools overlooking the ocean. LB:In the main amphitheater, seven swimming pools, holding two million gallons of seawater and ranging in temperature from icy to warm, overlooked the ocean. Sprawson:Their temperature varied from ice-cold to warm. They held two million gallons of sea water, and could accommodate ten thousand bathers at a time,who could vary their swimming with swinging from the rings and trapezes, or diving off the nine springboards and several high platforms. LB:At any one time, ten thousand bathers swam, swung from the rings and trapezes, and dived from the springboards and platforms. BUT SPRAWSON AND LB somehow misplace the Fleishhaker swimming pool, which they call "the Fleishhaker." The pool,no longer in existence, was south of Sutro Baths, along the Pacific, yet Sprawson (writing from Britain, perhaps) writes: "On the other side of the Bay was the largest open-air pool in the world,the Fleishhaker, that resembled a lake with an Italian Renmaissance changing room stretching almost its entire length."Well, it was a thousand

Lencek and Bosker describe themselves as specialists in popular culture and that they are. Their book on the history of the beach should be properly be described as history lite. The central theme of the work is what people have and are doing on it and in it, what do they wear to the beach and not wear to it, etc. In short this is a social history of the beach with only passing references to its many other aspects such as geology, economics, politics, history, ecology, etc.The book also looks at the beach at length only in the U.S., the U.K. and on the northern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. The social history of the beach in the rest of the world, were in fact most beaches are located, is never discussed other than in passing.For those going to the beach with time to spend reading this is a fine book. For those looking for serious history you may wish to look elsewere.

I finally found a book that takes the reader through the history of society's love for the beach! It is a wonderfully light and easy read that reveals tons of interesting information about beach going. As a sand dune ecologist, I was very impressed with the representation of the present problems facing beach development. The historical trace enables the reader to understand why we keep pouring money into a disappearing shoreline!