From the overleaf: IN THE MIDST OF A STANDARD MIDLIFE CRISIS-COMPLETE WITH WINE-TASTING, YOGA CLASSES, AND A FAILED ATTEMPT AT A FIRST NOVEL, FORTY-YEAR-OLD BARRY STRAUSS FALLS UNEXPECTEDLY AND PASSIONATELY IN LOVE WITH ROWING, A SPORT IN WHICH A TWENTY- SEVEN-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 finds 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 had 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."