Rowing Against the Current: On Learning to Scull at Forty

In the midst of the standard dreary midlife crisis -- complete with wine tasting courses, yoga classes, and a failed attempt at a first novel -- a 40-year-old Barry Strauss falls unexpectedly and passionately in love with rowing, a sport in which a 27-year-old is a has been. Strauss, a classics professor, writes about the unanticipated delights of an affair that, like so many others, begins as a casual dalliance and develops into a full-blown obsession. Drawn to the sport in part because of his affinity for Greek antiquity, he develops a love for old boathouses, a longing for rivers at dawn, a thirst to test himself, and, ultimately, a renewed sense of self-reliance -- as someone who had experienced sports humiliation as far back as Little League suddenly find himself bursting into athleticism at an unlikely age. From the awe-inspiring feats of the war-bound Greek triremes with their crews of 172 men rowing on three levels to the solitary pride of finishing a first race in which he gets stuck in the weeds and has to be fished out, Barry Strauss shows us why "there is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- half as much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."

Author: Barry Strauss
Publisher: Scribner Book Company
Published: 04/17/2001
Pages: 176
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.52lbs
Size: 8.54h x 5.58w x 0.45d
ISBN: 9780684863306

About the Author
Barry Strauss is a professor of history and classics at Cornell University, The Corliss Page Dean Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and a leading expert on ancient military history. He has written or edited several books, including The Battle of Salamis, The Trojan War, The Spartacus War, Masters of Command, The Death of Caesar, and Ten Caesars. Visit BarryStrauss.com.