POOLS <i> By Kelly Klein (Alfred A. Knopf: $100, 207 pp.) </i>

What do Kelly (Mrs. Calvin) Klein, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Esther Williams, Barry Diller and David Geffen have in common? That’s right, they all appear far too often in Liz Smith’s column. But had you answered that they’re all involved in a photographic anthology entitled “Pools,” you’d have been right, also. “Pools” was compiled by Kelly Klein, edited by Jackie O., introduced by Esther Williams, feted by Messrs Diller and Geffen, who threw the book party at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool, for which the weather was not accomodating. The lovely synchronized swimmers suffered goose bumps of the worst sort.

It is far too tempting to denigrate this expensive treatise on unbottled water organized by so many of the rich and famous, especially as Klein’s admitted purpose in compiling these photographs was to help her decide just what kind of pool she would like to add to her East Hampton, Long Island, mansion. (She filled in the one that came with the house--too ugly.) However, when I opened the book, the first photograph I saw was one of a modest pool in Deal, N.J., in which I spent considerable time frolicking during my childhood. The photo, taken by Alfred Stieglitz in 1910, depicts families lounging at poolside just as they did years later when my family luxuriated in this pool.

“We’re all born from water,” Esther Williams remarks in her intro. And we spend the rest of our lives hanging around it or hopping into it--soothing, joyous water. “Pools” is a sumptuous display of water contained in the most extravagant and simplest cement ponds, beautifully photographed by some of the world’s finest photographers: Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Edward Weston, Jacques Henri Lartigue, Robert Mapplethorpe and Helmut Newton. The book is certainly worth every penny if it helps the Klein family solve their watery dilemma in East Hampton.