Chronicles of History and Worship Orthodox Christian Reflections on the Books of Chronicles Book

I just found this in the library and thought it sounded interesting, it was. The main takeaway point is that in the early days of swimming pools (1880ish) pools were segregated by gender and class and no one cared about race. But when pools started becoming less segregated by gender (mostly in the interwar period) the pools were then segregated by race. When (after much fighting) the pools were integrated, whites normally just stopped showing up to public pools, and retreated to private club pools (also segregated) or home pools. Wiltse does a good job tracing out why this happened and what it means. Of special interest to me is that the rise of private or home pools contributed to Putnam's idea of civic retreat. Of all things, our town is finally building a city pool (I have heard rumors we never had one because of potential race issues, but I haven't confirmed that), and I am happy there will be an outdoor pool in the summer.