A book that defines the importance of surfing to the Australian psyche with a far-ranging look at the surfers, the boards, the beaches and the surfwear that have shaped the sport for generations. After its 'discovery' in the pacific the Australians and Americans adopted surfing as a sport of choice, their long ocean-facing coastlines providing ample opportunity for experimentation and development. Only a Surfer knows the Feeling captures the essence of the sport and how Australians and Australian companies such as Billabong have been a leading force in building the surf culture of today. Beautifully designed and illustrated throughout with fantastic action photography, this is a book no surfer will want to be without.

Surfing's Greatest Misadventures contains thirty of themost engaging, humorous and unbelievable stories ofsurfing life from the past fifty years. Culled fromhundreds of submissions, the non-fiction stories selectedfor this one-of-a-kind collection run the gamut from theterrifying to the comical to the downright bizarre. Thestories ......

“I don’t normally read books about surfers, but this is like Truman Capote, with shorts.” —Lee Child “Andy Martin, to his immense credit, knows that surfers are misfits and accidental comics, as well as great athletes.” —Matt Warshaw “A sublime mixing of stoke and sorrow, hedonism and the macabre—skillfully and deftly penned by someone who had, and still has, intimate access to many of the key players." —Tom Anderson, author of Riding the Magic Carpet: A Surfer's Odyssey to Find the Perfect Wave This is the true story of Ted, Viscount Deerhurst, the son of the Earl of Coventry and an American ballerina who dedicated his life to becoming a professional surfer. Surfing was a means of escape, from England, from the fraught charges of nobility, from family, and, often, from his own demons. Ted was good on the board, but never made it to the very highest ranks of a sport that, like most, treats second-best as nowhere at all. He kept on surfing, ending up where all surfers go to live or die, the paradise of Hawaii. There, in search of the “perfect woman,” he fell in love with a dancer called Lola, who worked in a Honolulu nightclub. The problem with paradise, as he was soon to discover, is that gangsters always get there first. Lola already had a serious boyfriend, a man who went by the name of Pit Bull. Ted was given fair warning to stay away. But he had a besetting sin, for which he paid the heaviest price: He never knew when to give up. Surf, Sweat and Tears takes us into the world of global surfing, revealing a dark side beneath the dazzling sun and cream-crested waves. Here is surf noir at its most compelling, a dystopian tale of one man’s obsessions, wiped out in a grisly true crime.

Discover how the freedom of sucking at something can help you build resilience, embrace imperfection, and find joy in the pursuit rather than the goal. What if the secret to resilience and joy is the one thing we’ve been taught to avoid? When was the last time you tried something new? Something that won’t make you more productive, make you more money, or check anything off your to-do list? Something you’re really, really bad at, but that brought you joy? Odds are, not recently. As a sh*tty surfer and all-around-imperfect human Karen Rinaldi explains in this eye-opening book, we live in a time of aspirational psychoses. We humblebrag about how hard we work and we prioritize productivity over play. Even kids don’t play for the sake of playing anymore: they’re building blocks to build the ideal college application. But we’re all being had. We’re told to be the best or nothing at all. We’re trapped in an epic and farcical quest for perfection. We judge others on stuff we can’t even begin to master, and it’s all making us more anxious and depressed than ever. Worse, we’re not improving on what really matters. This book provides the antidote. (It’s Great to) Suck at Something reveals that the key to a richer, more fulfilling life is finding something to suck at. Drawing on her personal experience sucking at surfing (a sport she’s dedicated nearly two decades of her life to doing without ever coming close to getting good at it) along with philosophy, literature, and the latest science, Rinaldi explores sucking as a lost art we must reclaim for our health and our sanity and helps us find the way to our own riotous suck-ability. She draws from sources as diverse as Anthony Bourdain and surfing luminary Jaimal Yogis, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Jean-Paul Sartre, among many others, and explains the marvelous things that happen to our mammalian brains when we try something new, all to discover what she’s learned firsthand: it is great to suck at something. Sucking at something rewires our brain in positive ways, helps us cultivate grit, and inspires us to find joy in the process, without obsessing about the destination. Ultimately, it gives you freedom: the freedom to suck without caring is revelatory. Coupling honest, hilarious storytelling with unexpected insights, (It’s Great to) Suck at Something is an invitation to embrace our shortcomings as the very best of who we are and to open ourselves up to adventure, where we may not find what we thought we were looking for, but something way more important.

"Heart warming read that discusses depression, radical life change, and muses on the plight of the lifelong intermediate... grab a copy on Amazon" - David Lee Scales, Surf Splendor Podcast "I can recommend this book for non-surfers as much as surfers. It goes a long way towards explaining the hook that keeps people addicted to surfing and provides some personal lessons that can be applied to all walks of life" - Charlie Spurr - The Museum of British Surfing "Once I started reading, I couldn't put it down. The writing is wonderful and Simon really nails it when he defines what an average surfer is and how surfing affects us all" - Imi Barneaud, The Ocean Riders Podcast "Short uses the term "average" not as in mediocre, but to make it relatable to the masses of surfers who are not professionals, and not beginners, but the wave-riders in between. He teaches life lessons with every chapter. You can be scared, intimidated, proud and brave, all in one session" - The Orange County Register From the author of "A Story about Surfing, Identity and Depression" comes the #1 New Release 'The Average Surfer's Guide' The Average Surfer's Guide to Travel, Waves and Progression is a book about surfing as much as it is about mental health, life balance and prioritizing one's passions. The author explores the metaphysical effects of surfing, the biological effects of surfing and how the sport, percolated into a lifestyle opens us up to travel, adventure, community and a true belonging and identity. The book takes us into situations that many are familiar with, but few of us speak of. Short bravely shares details from his darker days fighting a severe depression before learning some valuable life lessons. "Simon Short sat at the end of a Newport Beach rock jetty in the darkness, clutching a gun and ready to end his life as his depression hit an all-time low. For years, Short thought he was on the right track. The surfer from England moved to California after visiting for a surf trip in his early 20s, met a girl who became his wife and had a career as a police officer near Palm Springs. This was what he was supposed to do, right? When it all came crashing down a few years later, he found himself staring out into the ocean, the place that had been his one constant source of solace since he was a teen." Feb 2019 - The OC Register The Average Surfer's Guide takes a unique approach by forgetting the glamour of professional surfing and telling honest, humorous and engaging stories from a true, every-day, average surfer. The book teaches us how to progress away from complacency, both in our surfing and our everyday lives. In the end, this book will make you a better surfer. Not through technique but through teaching a new mindset and outlook towards life and surfing. The Average Surfer's Guide takes us on a journey from dark to light and teaches us how to live a true, balanced life that is authentic to who we are and what makes us happy. In this case, surfing.

From the bestselling author of Assholes: A Theory, a book that—in the tradition of Shopclass as Soulcraft, Barbarian Days and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance—uses the experience and the ethos of surfing to explore key concepts in philosophy. The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once declared "the ideal limit of aquatic sports . . . is waterskiing." The avid surfer and lavishly credentialed academic philosopher Aaron James vigorously disagrees, and in Surfing with Sartre he intends to expound the thinking surfer's view of the matter, in the process elucidating such philosophical categories as freedom, being, phenomenology, morality, epistemology, and even the emerging values of what he terms "leisure capitalism." In developing his unique surfer-philosophical worldview, he draws from his own experience of surfing and from surf culture and lingo, and includes many relevant details from the lives of the philosophers, from Aristotle to Wittgenstein, with whose thought he engages. In the process, he'll speak to readers in search of personal and social meaning in our current anxious moment, by way of doing real, authentic philosophy.

**Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Autobiography** Included in President Obama’s 2016 Summer Reading List “Without a doubt, the finest surf book I’ve ever read . . . ” —The New York Times Magazine Barbarian Days is William Finnegan’s memoir of an obsession, a complex enchantment. Surfing only looks like a sport. To initiates, it is something else: a beautiful addiction, a demanding course of study, a morally dangerous pastime, a way of life. Raised in California and Hawaii, Finnegan started surfing as a child. He has chased waves all over the world, wandering for years through the South Pacific, Australia, Asia, Africa. A bookish boy, and then an excessively adventurous young man, he went on to become a distinguished writer and war reporter. Barbarian Days takes us deep into unfamiliar worlds, some of them right under our noses—off the coasts of New York and San Francisco. It immerses the reader in the edgy camaraderie of close male friendships forged in challenging waves. Finnegan shares stories of life in a whites-only gang in a tough school in Honolulu. He shows us a world turned upside down for kids and adults alike by the social upheavals of the 1960s. He details the intricacies of famous waves and his own apprenticeships to them. Youthful folly—he drops LSD while riding huge Honolua Bay, on Maui—is served up with rueful humor. As Finnegan’s travels take him ever farther afield, he discovers the picturesque simplicity of a Samoan fishing village, dissects the sexual politics of Tongan interactions with Americans and Japanese, and navigates the Indonesian black market while nearly succumbing to malaria. Throughout, he surfs, carrying readers with him on rides of harrowing, unprecedented lucidity. Barbarian Days is an old-school adventure story, an intellectual autobiography, a social history, a literary road movie, and an extraordinary exploration of the gradual mastering of an exacting, little-understood art.

From legendary writer Paul Theroux comes an atmospheric novel following a big-wave surfer as he confronts aging, privilege, mortality, and whose lives we choose to remember.

Full colour coffee table book with 52 surf-life wisdoms and accompanying photographs.

The inspirational story of one woman learning to surf and creating a new life in gritty, eccentric Rockaway Beach Unmoored by a failed marriage and disconnected from her high-octane life in the city, Diane Cardwell finds herself staring at a small group of surfers coasting through mellow waves toward shore--and senses something shift. Rockaway is the riveting, joyful story of one woman's reinvention--beginning with Cardwell taking the A Train to Rockaway, a neglected spit of land dangling off New York City into the Atlantic Ocean. She finds a teacher, buys a tiny bungalow, and throws her not-overly-athletic self headlong into learning the inner workings and rhythms of waves and the muscle development and coordination needed to ride them. As Cardwell begins to find her balance in the water and out, superstorm Sandy hits, sending her into the maelstrom in search of safer ground. In the aftermath, the community comes together and rebuilds, rekindling its bacchanalian spirit as a historic surfing community, one with its own quirky codes and surf culture. And Cardwell's surfing takes off as she finds a true home among her fellow passionate longboarders at the Rockaway Beach Surf Club, living out "the most joyful path through life." Rockaway is a stirring story of inner salvation sought through a challenging physical pursuit--and of learning to accept the idea of a complete reset, no matter when in life it comes.