surfing

The companion book to Jeff Johnson's film about retracing the 1968 journey of Yvon Chouinard and Doug Tompkins to Patagonia. Part surf trip, part climbing expedition, part environmental reckoning. Johnson sails, hitchhikes, and climbs his way to the edge of the world — and finds it being sold off piece by piece.

The former editor of Surfer magazine has become the sport's greatest historian. With a wry vision and crackling wit, Matt Warshaw created the Encyclopedia of Surfing online. Nothing like it exists for any sport, anywhere. is just that—a dipping of the toe into his fine and tubular waters.

Richard Olsen's photographic history of surfing's most creative era — the shortboard revolution, the North Shore, the counterculture years when surfing was both a sport and a philosophy. The images alone justify the book.

Jaimal Yogis's memoir of surfing and Zen practice — from Ocean Beach to Indonesia to the monasteries of Burma. A surfer-monk's search for the connection between riding waves and sitting still.

Paul Wilson's account of a surf trip to Mexico that went catastrophically wrong. Crime, corruption, and the thin line between adventure and disaster. A cautionary tale told at full speed.

William Finnegan's memoir is the best book ever written about surfing, and it's not close. Decades of wave-hunting across five continents, from childhood in Honolulu to middle age in New York, rendered in prose that captures the exact texture of water moving over reef. It won the Pulitzer for a reason.

Daniel Duane's memoir of a year spent surfing in Santa Cruz. Literary, self-aware, and honest about the gap between the surfer he wanted to be and the surfer he was. One of the few surf books that reads as well on land as it does in the water.

Amy Waeschle's surf travel memoir — chasing swells from the Pacific Northwest to Central America to Indonesia. A woman's perspective in a genre dominated by men, told without apology.

Outer Hebrides. Marshall Islands. Haida Gwaii. Tanzania. Vanuatu. Madagascar. Russia. Oregon-based writer Michael Kew heeds the siren song of hard-to-reach locales as few do, and his book Crossings pulls together thirty-five true stories earned from a decade of global surf travel. 400+ pages might seem daunting, but Kew, who’s been likened to Paul Theroux and Jack Kerouac, writes with such an uncanny ear for people and places even non-surfers will be stricken with wanderlust: “Peering into the flames, I wedged my elbows comfortably between driftwood scree, shoes stirring the coarse, gray beach sand. Opposite the fire pit, through the torquing yellows and oranges, sat new friend Roderic: Burly, stubble-faced and densely clothed, alternating between beer and cigarette, he looked more like a typical commercial fisherman than surfer. Yet this was no typical surfscape.” Real adventure travel—the kind that isn’t comfortable, safe, or easily consumed—reminds us that while the world can seem small at times, it remains a very, very big place.

Jamie Brisick's essays on surf culture — the style, the characters, the places where surfing intersects with art, music, and literature. Brisick writes about surfing the way a jazz critic writes about music.

Chris Burkard's photography of remote surf breaks in Iceland, Norway, the Faroe Islands, and other places where the water is cold enough to kill you. The images are stunning — empty lineups, volcanic coastlines, surfers as small figures in enormous landscapes.

Chris Dixon's investigation of Cortes Bank — a submerged island 100 miles off San Diego that produces some of the largest waves on earth. Part surf history, part oceanography, part story of the obsessives who chase waves that could kill them.

Chris Burkard's photography of surfing at the extremes — Arctic breaks, remote Pacific islands, storm swells in Iceland. The images are enormous and cold and beautiful.

Garrett McNamara's memoir of surfing the biggest waves on earth — including his record-setting ride at Nazaré. McNamara's childhood was chaotic and his path to big-wave surfing was unlikely. The waves are the least surprising part of the story.

Allan Weisbecker sold everything and drove from New York to Central America looking for an old surfing buddy and perfect waves. What he found was murkier — drugs, corruption, and the realization that you can't surf your way out of middle age.

Peter Heller — who wrote Hell or High Water — learns to surf in his forties. The humility of being a beginner, the ocean's indifference to your credentials, and the joy of catching a wave badly. Warm and self-deprecating.

Yvon Chouinard's business memoir and environmental manifesto. How a blacksmith who made climbing gear in his garage built Patagonia into a billion-dollar company without abandoning his principles. The most influential outdoor business book ever written.

The greatest competitive surfer of all time on his childhood, his rivalry with Andy Irons, and what it's like to spend your life inside waves. More introspective than you'd expect from an eleven-time world champion.

Jaimal Yogis caps off a wild and tumultuous youth by running away to Hawaii, where he chases his dreams of living on the beach and riding warm, tropical waves. But his rebellious adventure soon transforms into an inward-facing journey, as he unexpectedly commits to the study of mindfulness and meditation. In his resulting travels from Buddhist monasteries to infamous surf breaks, Yogis explores the parallels between mindfulness and surfing, and he finds equanimity in the whole-hearted pursuit of both.

The history and culture of women's surfing — from the Hawaiian queens to the modern shortboard era. Photography, essays, and profiles of the women who refused to sit on the beach.

Chouinard on risk — in climbing, in business, in life. Short essays drawn from decades of doing things the hard way. The philosophy behind Patagonia, distilled to its essentials.

Photography and profiles of women surfers around the world — the culture, the style, the waves. A visual celebration of female surfing without apology or qualification.

Black-and-white portraits of surfers — faces weathered by salt and sun. Vanfleteren photographs surfers the way he photographs anyone: with unflinching intimacy. The ocean is implied but never shown.

The global history of surfing — how it traveled from Polynesia to every coastline on earth, and what happened when it arrived. Surfing in Gaza, surfing in Iceland, surfing in war zones. The unexpected results are the best parts.

Seven years sailing solo around the Pacific on a 40-foot boat, surfing remote breaks, and learning to live without a plan. A young woman's voyage that became a way of life. One of the best adventure memoirs of the last decade.

Having been a marina live-aboard for over three years, I know how many would-be sailors dream of bluewater voyages. But with trip logistics and obligations in the way, even the most dialed boaters rarely leave port. Against the odds, with a combination of good fortune, bartending shifts, and more than a year of hard boat prep, Liz Clark cast off from Santa Barbara in her early 20s and she’s been sailing and surfing the world ever since. Over a decade and 20,000 nautical miles later, Captain Clark brings us Swell, a memoir named after her beloved 1966 Cal-40. It’s a life seemingly so charmed it scarcely seems real, but Clark shares both sunshine and grime, from remote tropical islands and a surf sisterhood to broken-down engines and relationships both damaging and generous. With enchanting illustrations and photos, Swell offers an open-hearted exploration of how to stay aloft from one safe anchorage to the next, navigating the unknown terrain in between.

A surf noir novel set in Huntington Beach — murder, drugs, and waves. Dark, propulsive, and the best fictional treatment of Southern California surf culture ever written.

Burkard's photography of surfing the California coast — from the Oregon border to the Mexican border, every break along the way.

The definitive reference — every break, every surfer, every era, every contest. Warshaw spent decades compiling what is essentially the complete history of wave riding.

An investigation into the neuroscience of fear, tested in the surf. Big waves as a laboratory for understanding the brain's most ancient emotion.

Marc Andreini shapes surfboards in Santa Barbara the way his mentors did — by hand, from foam and fiberglass, one at a time. A collage of stories from a community built around craft and waves.

If sports could wish, every sport wishes it could be treated with the depth, breadth, love, and wit that Matt Warshaw has given surfing. The former editor of Surfer magazine, Warshaw is the preeminent chronicler of surfing history, and no one else is even close. But if the word “history” sounds musty, fear not: The writing crackles with vitality, the pace moves quickly, and Warshaw is mindful to place surfing’s tides within broader cultural currents, showing how each influenced the other. Surfer or not, this is a book any adventurer will love.

Beamish built a boat and sailed it down the Baja California coast, surfing the points along the way. Handmade craft, handmade journey. The slowest possible way to cover the distance.

Susan Casey's book about the science and culture of giant waves — from rogue waves that sink ships to the surfers who chase hundred-foot swells — reads like a thriller built on physics. She goes everywhere the big water goes: Nazaré, Mavericks, the open North Atlantic.