Municipal Pools Research Articles

The campaign for bodily autonomy and belonging in Grenoble, France: resisting epistemic violence, media discourse and othering

ABSTRACT Shared public spaces can be sites of struggle where cultural practices are positioned as ‘other’ in starkly different ways ranging from being celebrated to being stigmatised. This article presents a longitudinal case study of a campaign by a citizens' group (Alliance Citoyenne Grenoble) for changes to swimwear regulations within municipal pools in Grenoble, France. Ethnographic data reveals that the campaigners experienced forms of othering and epistemic violence through media and political discourse and lived experiences which directly impacted their sense of belonging. The study analyses those discourses and the strategies adopted by the group to resist forms of marginalisation.

Investigation of the Relationship between Organizational Cynicism and Job Burnout with the Mediating Role of Organizational Silence in Lifeguards of Tehran Municipal Pools

Introduction: The complexity of working conditions in organizations, including employees' distrust, and challenging working conditions combined with a negative feeling, has led to a sense of frustration in organizations, which can be due to the conditions regarding the community and the organizational climate. The purpose of this article is to investigate the relationship between organizational cynicism and job burnout with mediating role of organizational silence in lifeguards of Tehran municipal pools.
 Methods: The research method was causal, and applied in terms of purpose.A survey approach was used to collect data. Tools of collecting data were Kalagan Organizational Skepticism Questionnaire (2009), Dain et al.'s Organizational Silence Questionnaire (2003) and Maslach Questionnaire (1985) for Job Burnout. The statistical population of this study included 436 active lifeguards in Tehran municipal swimming pools. Sampling method was simple random. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze data, and LISREL 8.8 software was used for modeling structural equations.
 Results: Results demonstrated that organizational cynicism through organizational silence, affects job burnout among lifeguards in Tehran municipal pools. The effect was estimated to be 0.56 (z=4.96, ρ≤0.01). It seems that negative attitude of lifeguards, due to their fewer roles in decision-making and lack of information in the organization, causes them to react through silence, and the consequence of such silence, leads to job burnout
 Conclusion: As a result, the attitude of lifeguards towards their workplace can be negatively accompanied by unpleasant feelings, helplessness and anger, which seriously affects their performance Therefore, it is suggested that management, along with the presence of lifeguards in organizational decision-making processes and transparency, reduce burnout regarding this vital profession.

“Heat, Humidity and Humbug”: The Integration of the Municipal Swimming Pool in York, Pennsylvania, 1947–1954

This study of the closure, lease, and integration of the municipal pool in York, Pennsylvania, from 1947–1954 shows the important but limited value of the integration of a single recreational facility. The uneventful opening and use of the integrated pool were points of pride for civil rights activists and other city leaders, but the coalition that worked to open an integrated pool was motivated by more than racial justice. Supportive of integration but not outspoken about civil rights in the years leading up to the reopening of the pool, the businessmen and civic leaders who directed the Boys Club offered the solution to the controversy after other leaders and civil rights organizations lobbied city council, staged protests, and filed lawsuits. Building on key legal precedents, the York chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) launched successful lawsuits to stop York city council from leasing or selling the pool in order to avoid integration; J. W. Gitt’s radical newspaper, the York Gazette and Daily, kept the injustice of segregation on its front page; and then city boosters provided financial backing to fix the embarrassment of the decaying pool.

The Municipal Pool in Australia: Emotional Geography and Affective Intensities

Abstract In many Australian communities, outdoor municipal pools are much loved yet constantly threatened with closure. Threats of closure inspire impassioned responses and it is clear that these seasonal pools offer much more than physical infrastructure. At first glance, the concept of ‘emotional geography’ seems to capture this ‘more’, and this essay, based on research at one such pool, demonstrates how pools afford sociality, embodied experiences and practices of emplacement that emotionally connect people to each other, to nature and to an imagined historical community. However, participants’ narratives also revealed affective intensities, and multisensory evocations of place and self synchronically encountered, that the concept of ‘emotional geography’ cannot capture. To understand the cultural meaning and personal significance of seasonal pools in Australia, we have to feel our way through the placial folding of affective intensities and emotional lives.

User fees and the permeability of public space at municipal pools and bathhouses in New York City, 1870 – present

ABSTRACT This paper examines fees for access to New York City’s public swimming and bathing spaces from 1870 to the present. We argue that, beyond generating revenue and rationing space, charges for admission to public bathing spaces have served to condition how permeable those spaces were to various groups of potential users. Municipal actors involved in administering baths and pools have used fees to maintain and order these spaces; to distinguish between deserving and undeserving users; and to include and exclude participants in an ostensibly universal public. Over time, fees have been naturalized, erasing these motivations and giving cause to their outcomes. We problematize the fee in order to address both theoretical questions about the nature of public space and practical ones about how municipal administrators govern amidst competing pressures to serve, develop and regulate urban residents and their communities.

The inhalation effects of by-products from chlorination of heated indoor swimming pools on spinal development in pup mice

IntroductionIt has been postulated that swimming in heated indoor swimming pools in the first year of life is associated with the development of spinal deformity in children. We explored in pup mice whether exposure to certain disinfection by-products resulting from chlorination of heated pools would affect the future development of the spinal column. MethodsMice, from birth and for 28 consecutive days, were exposed to chemicals known to be created by disinfection by-products of indoor heated swimming pools. The study made use of a body fluid analogue and a chlorine source to recreate the conditions found in municipal pools. A cohort of 51 wild-type C57B6 mice, male and female, were divided into two groups: experimental (n = 29) and controls (n = 22). 24 mice were observed for 8 months (32 weeks), with 27 culled at 4 months (16 weeks). Serial CT scanning was used to assess the spines. ResultsExposure to disinfection by-products resulted in an increase in the normal thoracic kyphotic spinal angle of the mice when compared with their controls at 10 weeks; experimental mice kyphosis range 35–82° versus 29–38° in controls. At 14 weeks the kyphosis of the experimental mice had reduced in size but never to that of the control group. ConclusionWe have demonstrated the ability to influence spinal development in pup mice through environmental factors and shown that the developmental deformity became evident only after a significant latent period.

Assessment and modelling of the viability of a solar heating system for aquatic centres in southern Australia

Aquatic centres are large users of energy for water and space heating with an energy intensity which can be up to seven times that of a commercial office building in Australia. Much of the energy is used to heat water to relatively low temperatures, and therefore, solar energy technology is capable of providing this energy. In the residential sector, solar thermal systems for heating water and swimming pools are well-established. This is not the case for commercial swimming pools i.e. aquatic centres. In Australia, a program to encourage commercial pool operators to install solar systems was funded in the early 1980s. This paper has investigated the current use of and attitudes to solar systems in commercial pools through a survey of municipal pool operators in Victoria, southern Australia. The survey found that there has been very little increase in the use of solar energy and that perceived barriers to the use of the technology remain the same as they were nearly 30 years ago. Lack of roof area, poor payback periods and an inability of solar to meet pool heating needs are the most common misconceptions. The paper investigates these misconceptions by analysing the hot water needs of a large aquatic centre in Melbourne. It was found that there was sufficient roof area to accommodate a solar system that would provide a solar fraction of 0.60 and the simple payback period for a solar system using unglazed solar collectors was approximately 6.7 years at current gas prices. These are predicted to rise significantly making solar energy an even more attractive proposition for commercial pool heating. Failure of past incentives to stimulate the uptake of solar pool heating systems necessitates a revised approach. Key stakeholders (industry bodies, local governments, pool operators, manufacturers, relevant HVAC consultants and research organisations) all need to be involved in an exemplar project to demonstrate the technology’s viability for aquatic centres.

Dangerous Refuge: Richard Wright and the Swimming Hole

This essay looks at Richard Wright’s “Big Boy Leaves Home” as a story about swimming—that is, about a natural world claimed as white property and marked “No Trespassing”—finding in Wright’s swimming hole an oblique echo of other bodies of water segregated by violence, from Lake Michigan to municipal pools.

“Our Color Won’t Wash Off”: The Desegregation of Swimming in Lancaster, Pennsylvania

Abstract In Lancaster, Pennsylvania, as in other northern cities, the campaign to desegregate swimming was a protracted drama of victories in court, pool owners’ evasion of state civil rights law, and white flight from integrated facilities. In 1960, Lancaster progressives filed lawsuits against three privately owned pools that were open to the public on a daily basis but did not allow African Americans. Such exclusion was a violation of Pennsylvania’s Equal Rights Act of 1939, which forbade discrimination in public accommodations (or facilities open to the public) based on race, creed, or color. In Lancaster, when the courts sided with African American patrons, the pools quickly shifted from open-access to members-only policies to evade state civil rights law. The city and county responded to the privatization of the three pools by building publically funded pools in 1966 and 1967. Lancaster’s new, high-quality pools, located in parks, were different from most of the other pools built during this “municipal pool renaissance” in which cities built pools—usually shallow and small—in blighted neighborhoods as a strategy for calming urban violence in the second half of the 1960s. The Lancaster case confirms northern ambivalence about civil rights and uncovers one community’s struggle to build and define public swimming pools.

Isolation of pathogenic Yersinia enterocolitica strains from different sources in Izmir region, Turkey.

Yersinia enterocolitica is a foodborne pathogen that is very rarely encountered in Turkey. In this work, several human, porcine, and environmental samples collected from Izmir region in Turkey were examined for the presence of Y. enterocolitica using different cultivation and enrichment methods. A total of nine pathogenic Y. enterocolitica strains were isolated; five strains from pig stool and manure samples and four strains from waste water samples. On the other hand, no Y. enterocolitica was isolated from human diarrheal stool samples (n = 102) and from 12 gulf, canal, municipal pool, and well water samples. Biochemical and serological characterization of the nine Y. enterocolitica strains revealed that they belonged to three different bioserotypes: 4/O:3, 2/O:9, and 2/O:5,27. All the strains were deemed pathogenic based on virulence factor-specific PCR analysis. Detection of pathogenic Y. enterocolitica strains from the pig and waste water samples from the Izmir region indicates that Y. enterocolitica is a potential risk for public health.

Adapting and implementing an evidence-based sun-safety education program in rural Idaho, 2012.

BackgroundMelanoma incidence and mortality rates in Idaho are higher than national averages. The importance of increased awareness of skin cancer has been cited by state and local organizations. St. Luke’s Mountain States Tumor Institute (MSTI) prioritized educational outreach efforts to focus on the implementation of a skin cancer prevention program in rural Idaho.Community ContextAs a community cancer center, MSTI expanded cancer education services to include dedicated support to rural communities. Through this expansion, an MSTI educator sought to partner with a community organization to provide sun-safety education. MSTI selected, adapted, and implemented an evidence-based program, Pool Cool.MethodsThe education program was implemented in 5 phases. In Phase I, we identified and recruited a community partner; in Phase 2, after thorough research, we selected a program, Pool Cool; in Phase 3, we planned the details of the program, including identification of desired short- and long-term outcomes and adaptation of existing program materials; in Phase 4, we implemented the program in summer 2012; in Phase 5, we assessed program sustainability and expansion.OutcomeMSTI developed a sustainable partnership with Payette Municipal Pool, and in summer 2012, we implemented Pool Cool. Sun-safety education was provided to more than 700 young people aged 2 to 17 years, and educational signage and sunscreen benefitted hundreds of additional pool patrons.InterpretationCommunity cancer centers are increasingly being asked to assess community needs and implement evidence-based prevention and screening programs. Clinical staff may become facilitators of evidence-based public health programs. Challenges of implementing evidence-based programs in the context of a community cancer centers are staffing, leveraging of resources, and ongoing training and support.

What She Laughingly Calls Her Career: Susan Moody on Thirty Years of Writing (and Almost as Many Books)

January–February 2014 • 9 S usan Moody is among the most respected crime writers of England . She has published nearly thirty novels since her first, Penny Black (1984), which the Crime Writers Association voted in 1990 as one of the top one hundred crime novels of all time. She has been chair of the Crime Writers Association, world president of the International Association of Crime Writers, and has even been elected to that most exclusive and august body, the Detection Club, whose members have included legends Agatha Christie , G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy L. Sayers , and Simon Brett. It is a record to envy, and she continues to shine in a very unpredictable vocation. Her last four novels (three written under the pseudonym of Susan Madison) have received very positive reviews, and her newest, the recently released A Final Reckoning, was called “spine-tingling” by Publishers Weekly. Susan agreed to discuss her work from her home in Dordogne, France. J. Madison Davis: How did you begin in this crazy business? Susan Moody: I knew I was going to be a writer from my earliest years. I was always passionate about words, about literature, about reading and books: there really was no other career I could have gone into. I went into crime writing after having two historical novels published in the US—and no, you don’t want to know their titles! I grew up in tall, dark houses in Oxford, peopled by tall, dark academics for whom reading crime fiction was an allowable indulgence, so I had a rich store of those lovely Penguin greenbacks to devour. Those were the days, in any case, when children were supposed to be seen, not heard, so nobody ever talked to me, which What She Laughingly Calls Her Career Susan Moody on Thirty Years of Writing (and Almost as Many Books) Crime&Mystery international j. madison davis 10 worldliteraturetoday.org meant I could hide behind sofas and read while the clever grown-ups discussed the finer points of the Oxford comma or the abstruse subtexts of Shakespeare’s sonnets. I had access to any number of books, no censorship of what I read, and massive encouragement to read. Plus the fact that among the Oxbridge academics, it was considered respectable not only to read detective stories but also to write them. Years later, one of the national Sunday papers launched a competition to find a new and memorable female sleuth on the grounds that very few people recognized fictional female detectives. I was married, divorced, and had two children by then, and I thought, Yeah, that’s interesting . . . how many female sleuths could I name? Miss Marple and . . . erm. There are dozens of female sleuths now, but when I started what I laughingly call my career, there weren’t. So when Penny Wanawake, the daughter of an African diplomat and an English aristocrat—tall, black, sassy, rich—burst onto the crime scene, she was a breath of fresh air, a female equivalent of James Bond walking down the mean streets, taking no lip from anyone, considering herself the complete equal or superior of any man she met. JMD: Penny’s adventures lasted through seven novels. What inspired her creation? SM: In the 1960s, I moved from France with my husband to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. A huge eyeopener for a gently bred Oxford High School girl! I was astounded at the manner in which black people were still being treated: forced to live in ghettos away from the white folks, not allowed to swim in the same part of the municipal pool, addressed as “boy” by redneck twelve-year-olds. We found it deeply shocking. I can honestly say I had never seen any sign of such prejudice, growing up in liberal Oxford, nor working in both London and Paris after I left school. It must have been there, but I wasn’t aware. Perhaps I was too blind or too stupid! Oak Ridge was a National Laboratory: you can imagine how embarrassing it was when distinguished nonwhite scientists came to deliver lectures or take up positions and found themselves treated like third-class citizens. We worked for the NAACP; we saw the Klan come...

What She Laughingly Calls Her Career: Susan Moody on Thirty Years of Writing (and Almost as Many Books)

January–February 2014 • 9 S usan Moody is among the most respected crime writers of England . She has published nearly thirty novels since her first, Penny Black (1984), which the Crime Writers Association voted in 1990 as one of the top one hundred crime novels of all time. She has been chair of the Crime Writers Association, world president of the International Association of Crime Writers, and has even been elected to that most exclusive and august body, the Detection Club, whose members have included legends Agatha Christie , G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy L. Sayers , and Simon Brett. It is a record to envy, and she continues to shine in a very unpredictable vocation. Her last four novels (three written under the pseudonym of Susan Madison) have received very positive reviews, and her newest, the recently released A Final Reckoning, was called “spine-tingling” by Publishers Weekly. Susan agreed to discuss her work from her home in Dordogne, France. J. Madison Davis: How did you begin in this crazy business? Susan Moody: I knew I was going to be a writer from my earliest years. I was always passionate about words, about literature, about reading and books: there really was no other career I could have gone into. I went into crime writing after having two historical novels published in the US—and no, you don’t want to know their titles! I grew up in tall, dark houses in Oxford, peopled by tall, dark academics for whom reading crime fiction was an allowable indulgence, so I had a rich store of those lovely Penguin greenbacks to devour. Those were the days, in any case, when children were supposed to be seen, not heard, so nobody ever talked to me, which What She Laughingly Calls Her Career Susan Moody on Thirty Years of Writing (and Almost as Many Books) Crime&Mystery international j. madison davis 10 worldliteraturetoday.org meant I could hide behind sofas and read while the clever grown-ups discussed the finer points of the Oxford comma or the abstruse subtexts of Shakespeare’s sonnets. I had access to any number of books, no censorship of what I read, and massive encouragement to read. Plus the fact that among the Oxbridge academics, it was considered respectable not only to read detective stories but also to write them. Years later, one of the national Sunday papers launched a competition to find a new and memorable female sleuth on the grounds that very few people recognized fictional female detectives. I was married, divorced, and had two children by then, and I thought, Yeah, that’s interesting . . . how many female sleuths could I name? Miss Marple and . . . erm. There are dozens of female sleuths now, but when I started what I laughingly call my career, there weren’t. So when Penny Wanawake, the daughter of an African diplomat and an English aristocrat—tall, black, sassy, rich—burst onto the crime scene, she was a breath of fresh air, a female equivalent of James Bond walking down the mean streets, taking no lip from anyone, considering herself the complete equal or superior of any man she met. JMD: Penny’s adventures lasted through seven novels. What inspired her creation? SM: In the 1960s, I moved from France with my husband to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. A huge eyeopener for a gently bred Oxford High School girl! I was astounded at the manner in which black people were still being treated: forced to live in ghettos away from the white folks, not allowed to swim in the same part of the municipal pool, addressed as “boy” by redneck twelve-year-olds. We found it deeply shocking. I can honestly say I had never seen any sign of such prejudice, growing up in liberal Oxford, nor working in both London and Paris after I left school. It must have been there, but I wasn’t aware. Perhaps I was too blind or too stupid! Oak Ridge was a National Laboratory: you can imagine how embarrassing it was when distinguished nonwhite scientists came to deliver lectures or take up positions and found themselves treated like third-class citizens. We worked for the NAACP; we saw the Klan come...

Praise as Protector of the Natural World

Praise as Protector of the Natural World Kathy Abbott About two miles from my parish, there is a place where on these blazing hot summer days, you can enter a green lawn under an enclosure of towering oak trees and feel ten degrees cooler. The oaks surround an ancient spring‐fed pond, which has been enlarged and adapted over the years into a pond/swimming pool hybrid. In the 1930s children dove off a floating dock in the middle of the pond, but now they use diving boards and tubular plastic slides along a straight cement wall at the deep end. Despite the cement, the tree canopy and the pond's rounded, dark shape provide the impression that you are at a serene, natural body of water. In fact, native frogs have this impression too, since each August they find their way to the grassy, shaded edge of the water, much to the delight of frog‐catching children. This green place is special, and a new historical marker put up in 2010 says as much. It was founded in 1929 by a group of Jewish summer homeowners from Brooklyn. The pool plus 150 acres were known as The Colony until 1969. The original owners enlarged the natural pond, stocked it with fish, and also allowed swimming. The pool transferred to municipal ownership in 1969 and has been managed and maintained by municipal employees ever since. Because it is a municipal pool, the landscaping is not on par with private swim clubs, but those majestic old oaks are inviting. Since 1995, I have raised my children on the partially shaded beach side of the pool. Under the trees, parents park their strollers and let infants and toddlers sleep. Mothers, protected by a blanket, nurse infants. There are two play structures, one for toddlers and one for older kids, in the wooded recesses around the beach area. Both are welcome respites from the sun at the water's edge. Lots of people know the pattern of the sun, and set up their chairs on the side of the beach where the shade grows as the day progresses. Others place their chairs at the edge of the shade closest to the water in the morning, and then follow the shade as it gradually retracts. Shade is what the skin doctors order, especially for children under age 3. There is something else the shade offers. You feel an almost parental comfort from the stately trees. When you reach a relaxed equilibrium of playing, chatting or observing, you may notice the abiding presence of the trees. Amidst the gentle rustle of the leaves, you can become in tune with the hum, the perpetual motion of the earth's energy within and without. The trees are breathing themselves, sending our lungs pure oxygen, and we, in a divinely complementary way, return the favor by breathing out carbon dioxide. In addition, the trees are performing transpiration by releasing fine water droplets through their leaves, thereby cooling all organisms living beneath their canopy. As one of these organisms, you may sense that you are nourished and suspended in a larger whole. This feeling of comfort from nature, this almost womb‐like experience, is called Biophilia, the love of nature. Biophilia, a term coined by biologist E.O. Wilson, leads us to seek recreation in beautiful natural places, with water, scenic landscapes and clear skies. We want to re‐charge, re‐create ourselves in natural spaces where we momentarily feel free from personal obstacles and challenges. Theologian David Toolan, S.J. calls this felt‐sense of belonging to the infinite a “cosmic embrace.” This intuited awareness of participating in something larger than ourselves is also what theologian Karl Rahner, S.J. defined as the human capacity for “pre‐reflective,” “pre‐conceptual” knowledge that the divine is incarnate in our world. St. Augustine referred to this same non‐verbal knowledge of God when he wrote in the 4th century that Christians, of which the vast majority were illiterate, could read the “Book of Nature” equally as well as the sacred scriptures to find illumination about the order, beauty and love of God. Our ancestors set to music this knowledge of...

A statewide outbreak of Cryptosporidium and its association with the distribution of public swimming pools

In order to characterize the association between county-level risk factors and the incidence of Cryptosporidium in the 2007 Iowa outbreak, we used generalized linear mixed models with the number of Cryptosporidium cases per county as the dependent variable. We employed a spatial power covariance structure, which assumed that the correlation between the numbers of cases in any two counties decreases as the distance between them increases. County population size was included in the model to adjust for population differences. Independent variables included the number of pools in specific pool categories (large, small, spa, wading, waterslide) and pool-owner classes (apartment, camp, country club or health club, hotel, municipal, school, other) as well as the proportion of residents aged <5 years. We found that increases in the number of bigger pools, pools with more heterogeneous mixing (municipal pools vs. country club or apartment pools), and pools catering to young children (wading pools) are associated with more cases at the county level.

Fatalities in swimming pools with lifeguards: USA, 2000–2008

BackgroundPools with lifeguards are often perceived to represent a safe environment for swimming.ObjectivesTo examine how often fatalities occurred in pools with lifeguards and what factors were common in these incidents.DesignCase...

A Useless and Terrible Death: The Michael Farmer Case, “Hidden Violence,” and New York City in the Fifties

In the summer of 1957, old conflicts among black, white, and Hispanic youths over access to a public pool in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan exploded in the murder of one white youth and the wounding of another. Despite a history of white gangs harassing young people of color on the way to municipal pools in New York, the possibility that racial and ethnic conflict had something to do with the killing was dismissed. In the courts, journalism and city government, the slaying was framed as an incident of juvenile delinquency. This ignored a long tradition of informal segregation at formally integrated public pools. It also overlooked growing tensions among white, black and Hispanic New Yorkers, and perpetuated the illusion that New York was a liberal city that would escape battles over integration.

The past and future of local swimming pools

This article examines both recent policy to rationalise the provision of local public swimming pools, and the controversy that some closure or redevelopment plans have generated. Focusing on Victoria, the article analyses the cultural and political history of municipal pools, challenging a current policy narrative of local authority failure by highlighting earlier civic and higher government initiatives for pool building. Physical infrastructure has been little studied by scholars in the humanities and social sciences. With much of Australia's post-World War Two infrastructure reaching the end of its effective life in the first few decades of this century, the story of local pools illuminates a policy challenge with major social, political and environmental implications.

Contested waters: a social history of swimming pools in America

From nineteenth-century public baths to today's private backyard havens, swimming pools have been a provocative symbol of American life. In this social and cultural history of swimming pools in the United States, Jeff Wiltse relates how, over the years, pools have served as asylums for the urban poor, leisure resorts for the masses, and private clubs for middle-class suburbanites. As sites of race riots, shrinking swimsuits, and conspicuous leisure, swimming pools reflect the tensions and transformations that have given rise to modern America. Americans have intensely contested the use of municipal pools because they are such intimate public spaces. Swimmers undress side by side, share the same water, and exhibit themselves on pool decks and sand beaches. Wiltse's analysis of a variety of pool disputes illuminates underlying tensions in American society over women's bodies, the social geography of urban spaces, the spread of diseases, cultural authority, and interracial mingling. Contested Waters offers a panorama of American life. It is, at once, a story of class and race conflicts, burgeoning cities and suburbs, competing visions of social reform, eroticized public culture, democratized leisure, and Americans' recent retreat from public life.

Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America. By Jeff Wiltse. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. xii, 276 pp. $29.95, ISBN 978-0-8078-3100-7.)

Jeff Wiltse begins Contested Waters with a story about a young black boy who, in 1951, could “swim” in a Youngstown pool only after everyone else left the water, he boarded a rubber raft, and promised not to touch the water. It is a good starting point, for it introduces the topic of swimming pools in American history with its most standard social association—extreme racist paranoia. What Wiltse shows in this well-written account, however, is that racism is only half the story. Wiltse traces the history of municipal pools in two distinct periods: from their inception as cleansing baths to the 1920s and from then to, roughly, the present. He interestingly argues that an analysis of swimming pools in the first era turns the traditional historical view of commercial amusements on its head. While other amusements of the Progressive Era, such as Coney Island and dance halls, provided places where social classes mixed but where strict racial segregation was maintained, swimming pools did the opposite, allowing racial mixing but keeping a strict division of gender and social classes. That situation changed in the 1920s when municipal pools joined other amusements in permitting white-only social classes to mix. The change was most dramatic during the New Deal, when posters for a New York City “learn to swim” program showed whites and blacks separated. Wiltse concludes that the Great Migration was important in the shift from social to racial segregation, but that “gender integration and the eroticization of swimming pools” played an increasingly greater role (p. 124). Where racial mixture continued, violence ensued. Highland Park, the site of a pool in Pittsburgh, endured several years of white-on-black violence until city officials herded blacks into a smaller, dilapidated pool already abandoned by whites. Wiltse posits that fear of black-white gender integration—looming miscegenation—led to the blanket segregation that became the norm. It is an interesting and well-supported conclusion. Wiltse finds another interesting way that swimming pools deviated from other “places of amusement”: municipal pools defined themselves from the “ground-up.” In short, municipal pools serve as an aberration in the hegemonic creation of consumer culture by creating their own public culture not driven by spending money.