Barry S. Strauss

In the midst of the standard, dreary midlife crisis -- complete with wine-tasting courses, 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 professor of classics and history, 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 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."

on learning to scull at forty

Rowing against the current

The Revolt of the Gladiators

Spartacus War

Drawing on the latest archaeological research, an expert account of the famous historical battle confirms many details recounted in Homer's epic account, from Troy's alliance with the Hittite Empire and the role of Greek maritime commerce in the war to the significant fire at the end of the twelfth century and the facts about the Trojan horse. 50,000 first printing.

A New History

The Trojan War

The Athenians could not separate politics from the private sphere; indeed father-son conflict was a major public as well as private theme. This book explores the consequences of the powerful influence of familial ideology on politics.

Ideology and Society in the Era of the Peloponnesian War

Fathers and Sons in Athens

David Richard McCann

Bringing together distinguished Classicists, Koreanists, and Americanists, this book examines the cultural and political/institutional dimensions of war's impact on society by comparing the effects of prolonged war on ancient Athens during the war with Sparta, and on the United States and the two Koreas, North and South, during the Korean War. Despite the very circumstances of the two conflicts and the radically different way each was viewed in its own time, the contributors point to many underlying similarities between the two wars and put each in a fascinating and unique perspective.

A Comparative Study of the Korean War and the Peloponnesian War

War and Democracy

Class, Faction and Policy, 403-386 BC

Athens After the Peloponnesian War

In the channel between the Island of Salamis and the Greek mainland on a September morning in 480BC, two of the greatest civilisations the world has seen collideda The war which had raged for twenty bloody years reached crisis point. The Persians, led by Xerxes, had invaded Greece and taken half of it. The Greeks stood poised to strike back, but with only 370 ships facing an armada of almost 700 Persian vessels, the odds were not good. SALAMIS tells the gripping story of one month in 480BC, when the ancient world trembled at the outcome of the largest land / sea invasion ever attempted. And nothing would be the same ever again.

Barry S. Strauss

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