Crew: The Rower's Handbook »

The introduction of women’s rowing as an NCAA sport is only one of many factors that helped crew shed its elitist Ivy League image and made it the fast-growing activity that it is today. Now Sports Illustrated veteran photographer Ronald C. Modra and his wife, journalist M.B. Roberts, have filled the need for an authoritative guide for all participants—from high school and college athletes (and their parents, coaches, and trainers) to adults eager to try rowing for the first time. Along with background on the sport’s history going back to ancient times, here’s complete instruction on everything from getting into the shell safely (without shoving your foot through the bottom) to efficient rowing form and competitive racing strategy.

Tim Delaney - Library Journal

This handbook is designed for the novice and beginning rower. Despite journalist Roberts's point that rowing has enjoyed great growth over the past two decades, it is a sport-both for men and for women-with limited participation and with little spectator attraction compared to football, NASCAR, baseball, basketball, and hockey. Roberts cites the rules of U.S. Rowing, which the majority of scholastic, collegiate, and club crews follow; provides a number of dos and don'ts; describes the elementary vocabulary of rowing (including chapter-ending glossaries); and chronicles the sport. She offers a definition of crew (which refers to the group of rowers assembled to propel a racing boat through the water using oars); a reminder that rowers row, they do not paddle; an explanation that an oarsman faces backward to go forward; descriptions of rowing equipment; and coverage of training techniques. Many photographs are provided by Roberts's husband, Modra, a veteran Sports Illustratedphotographer. Crewis an informative, albeit elementary, book and is recommended for sports collections.

Correction:In the review of Steven Gehrke's Michelangelo's Seizure(LJ8/07), we misquoted a line of poetry. It should have read "even if he could paint, the blistered, naked bodies...the white angel-maggots burrowing into a face, his mind at its core, could not help making things/beautiful."