Just Add Water

A candid and inspiring memoir from Olympic gold medalist, world champion, and one of the best swimmers ever to compete: Katie Ledecky.

Katie Ledecky has won more individual Olympic races than any female swimmer in history. She is a three-time Olympian, a seven-time gold medalist, a twenty-one-time world champion, eight-time NCAA Champion, and a world record-holder in individual swimming events. Time and again, the question is posed to her family, her coaches, and to her&&&8212;what makes her a champion? Now, for the first time, she shares what it takes to compete at an elite level.

Again and again, Ledecky has broken records: those of others and, increasingly, her own. She is both consistent and innovative&&&8212;consistent at setting goals and shattering them, and innovative in the way she approaches her training. A true competitor, she sets her goals by choosing the ones that feel the scariest. But, crucially, she never sacrifices the joy of competition, even in the face of adversity. Her positive mental outlook and a great support system provides the springboard to her success.

Just Add Water charts Ledecky’s life in swimming. It details her start in Bethesda, Maryland, where she played sharks and minnows and first discovered the joy of the pool; her early foray into the Olympics at the tender age of fifteen where, as the youngest member of the American team, she stunned everyone by winning her first gold medal; her time balancing competition and her education at Stanford University; how she developed a champion’s mindset that has allowed her to persevere through so many meets, even under intense pressure; and how she has maintained her dominance in a sport where success depends on milliseconds. You learn how every element of her life&&&8212;from the support of her family to the tutelage of her coaches, from her childhood spent in summer league swimming to the bright lights of Olympic pools in London, Rio, and Tokyo&&&8212;set her up to become the champion she is.

In the end, Katie’s story is about testing yourself against the difficult, and seeing who you become on the other side.

“[Ledecky] structures her memoir around all the special people in her life, who surely played crucial roles. But that downplays her own vast resources of self-invention…What sets her truly apart is her mind-set, how she is able to approach the sport emotionally and psychologically. In that, Ledecky is a marvel.”
—The New Yorker

“Even if you strip away the hardware and the legacy, she is, constitutionally, an outlier, an aquatic unicorn…There is no precedent for what Ledecky is doing.”
—The Washington Post 

“[An] absorbing, well-written new autobiography…a mosaic view of this astonishing athlete, where every turn of the kaleidoscope brings a new facet into sharp focus. Ledecky effectively guides the reader to an understanding of how she became quite possibly the greatest female swimmer of all time…Through it all, what emerges is Katie Ledecky’s fundamental decency, sense of humor (a Curb Your Enthusiasm fan? Who knew?), and sheer doggedness.”
—SwimSwam

"Ledecky’s writing pulses with her love for the pool and an appreciation for all the people that have shaped her into the champion she is—her coaches, her brother, her grandparents, and, of course, her parents. Readers will feel inspired by Ledecky’s enthusiasm and gratitude for everything she’s worked hard to achieve."
—Associated Press

“Ms. Ledecky’s book is just as much an ode to her family, coaches and mentors as it is a memoir. It may be light on drama, but it goes deep on a sport that many admire but few truly understand…most of her time, as has been the case for most of her life, is taken up by the sport of—no, the joy of—swimming.”
—The New York Times