The Civil War was over, a least on paper. Lee had surrendered his army to Grant and the Union two weeks earlier at Appomattox Courthouse. Prisoners long held in often unspeakable conditions both North and South were finally free to return to homes and loved ones left behind years earlier. But these were broken men, and they weren’t there yet.
Choose a stroke and get paddling through the human history of swimming!
From man’s first recorded dip into what’s now the driest spot on earth to the splashing, sparkling pool party in your backyard, humans have been getting wet for 10,000 years. And for most of modern history, swimming has caused a ripple that touches us all–the heroes and the ordinary folk; the real and the mythic.
Monday morning, May 4, 1970, found Kent State a place strangely divided against itself: part university, part military installation; a school where students were encouraged to gather in classrooms but prohibited from doing so on the campus Commons.
Published by Simon and Schuster
**Now Available in Paperback**
“Delightfully wry and perceptive, Means’s quest to understand Chapman/Appleseed is a captivating
achievement in Americana.” —Booklist, STARRED review
From the ashes of a divided nation came the Confederate States of America — and all that remains of the Union as we knew it is a disaster area called the Industrial Zone. The capital is Richmond, and the races are equal but very, very separate. That’s the premise of Howard Means’s fascinating, provocative, sophisticated new thriller.