Mike Burton

The ultimate underdog story of a swim coach who could not swim, a swim club that accepted minorities when others would not, and a group of young swimmers who became Olympic champions.Before the United States was the swimming power it is today, a novice coach named Sherm Chavoor formed a swim club that accepted all swimmers—no matter their religion, race, or social status—and started a dynasty. Following Chavoor’s intense and unorthodox coaching methods, his young swimmers quickly began dominating competitions across northern California—and then the world.In Victory in the Pool: How a Maverick Coach Upended Society and Led a Group of Young Swimmers to Olympic Glory, Bill George tells the inspiring story of Sherm Chavoor and his dedicated athletes who rose from obscurity to win twenty Olympic gold medals during the 1960s and ‘70s. They triumphed in two of the most tumultuous and dangerous Olympic Games ever held, the 1968 Mexico City Games and the 1972 Munich Games marred by the terrorist attack that killed eleven Israeli athletes. Mark Spitz and Debbie Meyer were the two most prominent members of the team, but they were challenged every step of the way by teammates and fellow Olympians Sue Pedersen, Mike Burton, John Ferris, Jeff Float, and more. Featuring exclusive interviews with the athletes and with Sherm Chavoor before he passed away, Victory in the Pool delivers an inside look at this unparalleled time in Olympic history. But more than that, it is the story of young people overcoming incredible odds—often in the face of insults and bigotry and under the intense glare of the spotlight—and coming out triumphant.

The human face poses a challenge to engineers, computer scientists, and psychologists alike. This book integrates different contributions by combining detailed review articles with general overviews of the relationship between different kinds of research on faces and contemporary problems in vision and cognition. Theoretical developments in this area are increasingly dependent on computer technology, both because image-processing techniques allow us to display and manipulate faces for experiments in ways that were not feasible with old photographic technology and because theoretical ideas can be expressed and tested more rigorously using computer simulation. The psychological contributions in this volume illustrate current theoretical developments that are heavily dependent on image processing and computer simulation. As technology improves, so it becomes increasingly feasible to automate many aspects of face processing normally taken for granted to develop new technological aids. Therefore, this volume also includes examples of computing developments for forensic purposes, for the simulation of plastic surgery, and for automatic animation for applications in telecommunications and creative arts.