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 hankering 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 back as far as Little League suddenly finds himself bursting into athleticism at an unlikely age.

From the awe-inspiring feats of the war-bound ancient Greek triremes with their crews of 172 men rowing on three levels, to the solitary pride of finishinga 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 --