Known internationally as "the Bible of canoe building," Canoecraft is back, and it's bigger and better than ever. The best-selling how-to guide has been completely revised and expanded, and master canoe builder Ted Moores again infuses the pages with the experience and wisdom acquired over almost three decades. His step-by-step instructions, generously illustrated with new photographs and diagrams and incorporated into an accessible fresh design, will allow even the beginner to create a reasonably priced classic. North America's leading builder of woodstrip/epoxy canoes, Moores is a longtime teacher of wooden-boat construction as well. With students who have ranged in age from 11 to 87, Moores has discovered that all have been motivated by the same dream: to build something beautiful and functional.

Canoecraft is the road map to that dream. In it, Moores offers comprehensive instructions for the first-time builder and, with the second-time builder in mind, includes a larger variety of canoe plans -- five of which are brand-new. In this edition, each plan is presented as a traditional table of offsets. Moores has also added a series of builder's tips and new techniques and an entire chapter on carving a paddle, the perfect accompaniment to your handcrafted canoe. His message is straightforward: When good materials are used and simple steps performed with care, professional results are sure to follow.

Whether your goal is to build a general-purpose recreational canoe, an efficient modern tripping canoe or a full-decked fast-cruising canoe with walnut veneer, Canoecraft can help you make it happen.

The evolution of the surfboard, from traditional Hawaiian folk designs to masterpieces of mathematical engineering to mass-produced fiberglass. Surfboards were once made of wood and shaped by hand, objects of both cultural and recreational significance. Today most surfboards are mass-produced with fiberglass and a stew of petrochemicals, moving (or floating) billboards for athletes and their brands, emphasizing the commercial rather than the cultural. Surf Craft maps this evolution, examining surfboard design and craft with 150 color images and an insightful text. From the ancient Hawaiian alaia, the traditional board of the common people, to the unadorned boards designed with mathematical precision (but built by hand) by Bob Simmons, to the store-bought longboards popularized by the 1959 surf-exploitation movie Gidget, board design reflects both aesthetics and history. The decline of traditional alaia board riding is not only an example of a lost art but also a metaphor for the disintegration of traditional culture after the Republic of Hawaii was overthrown and annexed in the 1890s. In his text, Richard Kenvin looks at the craft and design of surfboards from a historical and cultural perspective. He views board design as an exemplary model of mingei, or art of the people, and the craft philosophy of Soetsu Yanagi. Yanagi believed that a design's true beauty and purpose are revealed when it is put to its intended use. In its purest form, the craft of board building, along with the act of surfing itself, exemplifies mingei. Surf Craft pays particular attention to Bob Simmons's boards, which are striking examples of this kind of functional design, mirroring the work of postwar modern California designers. Surf Craft is published in conjunction with an exhibition at San Diego's Mingei International Museum.

Shifting Currents is an original and comprehensive history of swimming. It examines the tension that arose when non-swimming northerners met African and Southeast Asian swimmers. Using archaeological, textual and art historical sources, Karen Eva Carr shows how the water simultaneously attracted and repelled these northerners - swimming seemed uncanny, related to witchcraft and sin. Europeans used Africans' and Native Americans' swimming skills to justify enslaving them, but northerners also wanted to claim water's power for themselves. They imagined that swimming would bring them health and demonstrate their scientific modernity. This unresolved tension still sexualizes women's swimming and marginalizes Black and Indigenous swimmers today. The history of swimming is a new lens through which to gain a clearer view of race, gender and power on a centuries-long scale.