Books We Recommend
Looking for some motivational reading? Try these suggestions.
Rowing to Latitude: Journeys Along the Arctic's Edge
by Jill A. Fredston
From Publishers Weekly
In this lyrical look at rowing some of the world's most isolated and pristine coasts, Fredston focuses as much on her personal experience and her relationship with her husband, Doug Fesler, as she does on their actual journeys. The two avalanche experts, researchers and rescue trainers canoe the Arctic and sub-Arctic coastlines of Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Norway and Sweden for three months out of each year. They travel together but in separate canoes: an apt metaphor for their marriage. An avid rower since childhood, Fredston ultimately landed in Alaska, drawn by its possibility and wildness. There she met Fesler, the state's leading avalanche authority. They worked and rowed together, and eventually fell in love.
Fredston ably describes both the big picture the coastline, encounters with polar bears, the high-stakes game of second-guessing storms and tides and the details of their travels. Her description of the physical act of rowing is rapturous, even sensual: "Sculling is the closest I'll ever come to being a ballerina, to creating visual music." Fredston seems less at ease relating her mother's battle with cancer, near the book's end. Still, the book soars. "Wilderness rowing is far more than sport to me; it has been a conduit to know and trust myself," Fredston explains. "It is my way of being, of thinking, of seeing. In the process, rowing has evolved from something I do to some way that I am. Figuratively and literally I have spent years rowing to latitude."
A must-read for armchair travelers, as well as a close and loving look at an intimate relationship.
The Red Rose Crew: A True Story of Women, Winning and the Water
by Daniel J. Boyne
The unforgettable story of the first championship all-female crew team's quest for the gold—and a riveting, adventurous account of women winning against all odds.
More than twenty years before Mia Hamm led the U.S. Women's soccer team to win the 1999 World Cup, a group of amazing women rowed their way to international success and glory, battling sexual prejudice, bureaucracy, and male domination in one of the most grueling and competitive sports. Among the members of the first national women's crew team were Gail Pierson, the soft-spoken M.I.T. professor who fought equally hard off the water to win the political battles needed for her team to succeed; lead rower Carie Graves, a statuesque bohemian from rural Wisconsin who dropped out of college and later became the most intense rower of the crew; and Harry Parker, the legendary Harvard men's crew coach who overcame his doubts about women's ability to withstand the rigors of hard training. From their first dramatic bid at the 1975 World Championships, which won them the silver medal, to their preparations for their first Olympic Games in 1976, this gripping story of bravery, determination, and indomitable spirit captures a compelling moment in the history of sports, a turning point in American culture—and tells a truly exciting tale of women, winning, and the water.
About the Author:
Daniel J. Boyne is the Director of Recreational Rowing at Harvard University and former varsity women's coach at Tufts University. He has published numerous articles in periodicals such as Harvard Magazine, The Boston Book Review, and Wooden Boat. He is the author of Essential Sculling, a columnist for American Rowing magazine and a web magazine called scullingandsweep.com. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Water's Edge: Women Who Push the Limits in Rowing, Kayaking and Canoeing
by Linda Lewis
From Publishers Weekly
Each of the 10 chapters in this exciting look at female athletes focuses on a woman or group of women who have accomplished incredible feats on the water, including seven women who rode three canoes 630 miles up the Back River to the Arctic Ocean; the eight-person U.S. crew that won a gold medal in rowing in the 1984 Olympics; the 83-year-old "matriarch" of rowing who still competes in at least two regattas a year; the first woman to paddle a canoe around the Baja Peninsula; and a hard-driving member of Martha's Moms, a group of competitive middle-aged rowers whose insignia is an apple pie and crossed oars.
Freelance journalist Lewis offers just the right amount of straightforward explanation about the sports themselves so that even the uninitiated can follow the action. The book is more than a collection of individual stories however. As a whole it illustrates the importance of sports and convincingly portrays how identifying, training for and achieving a goal permeates the athlete's entire life with self-confidence. At the very least, as one of Martha's Moms remarked after trouncing a collegiate men's team, "It sure beats watching the grandkids."
Strong Women Stay Young
by Miriam E. Nelson
This book is about the scientifically proven strength-training program that turns back the clock for women aged 35 and up—from the famed research labs of Tufts University.
Miriam E. Nelson's research created worldwide news when the results were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. After a year of strength training twice a week, women's bodies were 15 to 20 years more youthful. They had less fat and more muscle; bone loss was prevented or reversed; their strength and energy increased dramatically; and they showed surprising gains in balance and flexibility. No other program—whether diet, medication, or aerobic exercise—has ever achieved comparable results.
Strong Women Stay Young shows how any woman can achieve the same benefits at home, in a program tailored to her individual needs. A bestseller in its first edition, it has now been revised to be even easier to use. It features eight streamlined exercises with fully illustrated instructions; new supplemental moves for the back, abs, and more; a complete program to do at the gym; plus an all-new chapter for men. Significant improvements are seen after just four weeks.
See the StrongWomen website at www.strongwomen.com. Dr. Nelson has also authored:
Game Face: What Does a Female Athlete Look Like?
by Jane Gottesman (Editor), Penny Marshall
The extraordinary collection of photographs and rich personal stories that make up Game Face documents the tremendous impact that sports has on the daily lives of millions of girls and women. On playing fields and street corners, in backyards and gyms, the people in this arresting array of pictures are unselfconsciously exploring the physical and emotional pleasures of competition and play. Each image offers an affirming and satisfying answer to the question at the heart of Game Face: What do girls and women look like, freed from traditional feminine constraints, using their bodies in joyful and empowering ways?
When Title IX was passed in 1972, only one out of twenty-seven school-age girls played sports. Now one in three does. Yet their expanding involvement in sports is still largely overlooked by the media, and as a consequence, millions of young female athletes crave not only role models but an authentic and appealing reflection of their own athleticism. As a young sports journalist, Jane Gottesman was all too aware of this imbalance, and saw the need for a book that honors both our top female athletes and the everyday girls and women whose self-image is strengthened through athletic participation. With the goal of showing America what women's sports looks like, she searched through the work of our country's best photographers, from the newest photojournalists to artists such as Annie Leibovitz and Ansel Adams. The result is Game Face, a unique and inspiring selection of color and black-and-white photographs, a text with first-person accounts by athletes, and an illustrated time line of women's athletic milestones.
Published simultaneously with the opening of an important exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution that will tour for five years, Game Face has been endorsed by the Girl Scouts of the USA, who've developed a Game Face patch, the NCAA, and the YWCA of the USA. An inspiring gift for an athlete of any age, this powerful, timely book takes one of art's most studied subjects the female body and celebrates it in a brand-new way.
See the website www.gamefaceonline.org regarding the traveling photography exhibition launched at the Smithsonian Institution.
About the Author
Jane Gottesman, Game Face project director and co-curator, was a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle, a contributing writer to Women's Sports & Fitness magazine, a writer and associate producer for ABC Sports, and co-editor of the book Play Like a Girl. She lives in Berkeley, California, and New York City.
The Game Face Collection was co-curated by Geoffrey Biddle, a photographer, educator, and author of the book Alphabet City.
Drawn to the Rhythm: A Passionate Life Reclaimed
by Sara Hall
From Publishers Weekly
"There is no greater terror or joy than to take the whole sum of who you are and express it in four minutes," writes Hall of racing a single-shell boat. In spring of 1995 Hall, a Long Island housewife with three children, experienced an epiphany when she observed a single shell moving on the water through the window of her car. This elegant and moving memoir recounts how she simultaneously fell in love with rowing and began moving away from a suffocating marriage wherein she was relentlessly belittled.
Initially rowing before dawn in order to meet her husband's demands that she be available when he and their children awoke, Hall's love and talent for the sport caused her submissive attitude to wane. Offering lyrical descriptions of rowing, Hall details how she competed in and won master events (she is the 1998 World Masters Champion in the women's single shell). As she gained the approbation of fellow rowers, and her children (although not her husband) expressed pride in her ability, she discovered parts of herself previously hidden beneath the facade of dutiful wife. A move to Boston, because of her husband's job, led her to part-time work with a racing shell company and close contact with a rowing community. When Hall told her husband she was divorcing him, he launched a legal and emotional campaign of intimidation to dissuade her; she eventually moved out. Hall now shares child custody with her former husband and continues to find joy and freedom in competitive rowing. Black and white photos. National radio/TV interviews.
