Our obsession with swimming goes back thousands of years and with the Olympics just weeks away the popular sport is once again dominating headlines. Veteran news correspondent Lynn Sherr's new book, "Swim" examines why we love the water - through history, anecdote and Sherr's own quest to swim across the channel separating Asia and Europe.

"[Swimming] fits so well into our lives today, countering the stresses and craziness of modern life," she told The New York Times.

Sherr joins The Daily Circuit Thursday to talk about why we love the water.

From The Washington Post review:

Swimmers, Sherr suggests, are a strange breed. Most at home in an alien environment, they recharge their batteries by spending time submerged in silence. Something unspoken unites the competitive pool-swimmer, the endurance open-water specialist and those who swim for leisure. It is this something (and everything) that she searches for in "Swim." It begins, Sherr says, with "the lure, the hold, the timeless enchantment of being in the water."

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