num_pages: 200
description: The Shell Game is about crew and college, "a strange and wonderful sport immersed so deeply in the equally strange and wonderful traditions of Yale University." But more than that, it is about finding a way of life within life, about rowing as self-containment, about life as a sublimation of rowing (not the other way around), about transcendence and teamwork.Stephen Kiesling writes eloquently concerning the special torments and exquisite pleasures of this sport, the training and technique, the discipline and testing of limits and the painfully achieved buy gloriously rewarding "symphony of motion." And to match the contemplation, there is competition -- against Harvard in particular but also against the recalcitrant self, in the quest for excellence.
language: English
title: The Shell Game: Reflections on Rowing and the Pursuit of Excellence
titlecomplete: The Shell Game: Reflections on Rowing and the Pursuit of Excellence
genres: Nonfiction, Sports, Memoir
ratings_count: 195
publisher: William Morrow & Co