A-frame

Aaberg, Denny

Aaberg, Kemp

Abberton, Koby

Abbruzzi, Sid

Abellira, Reno

Abubo, Megan

academia and surfing

Adler, Tom

advertising and surfing

Aeder, Erik

aerial

Aguerre, Fernando

Aichner, Scott

Aikau, Clyde

Aikau, Eddie

Aipa, Ben

air-drop

airbrush

Airshow

Ala Moana

Alabama

alaia board

Alaska

alcohol and surfing

Alexander, Kala

Allen, Chuck

Alms, Paige

aloha shirt

Alter, Hobie

Alvarez, Pepe

Ancell, Kevin

Andaman Islands

Andersen, Lisa

Anderson, Craig

Anderson, Simon

Andino, Kolohe

Angel, Jose

angle

Angola

Angourie

Antarctica

Apocalypse Now

Arabian Sea

Aragon, Janice

Arakawa, Eric

Archbold, Matt

Arena, Eduardo

Ashton, Juan

Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP)

Atlantic Ocean

August, Robert

Aurness, Rolf

Auster, Ken

Australia

Avalon, Frankie

Azores

backdoor

backside

backside attack, Pipeline

backwash

bail out

Bain, Rob

Baja California

Baker, Bernie

Baker, Grant “Twiggy”

Baker, Tim

Bali

Ball, John “Doc”

Ballard, Bill

Ballard, Rochelle

balsa

Baltic Sea

Banks, Jim

Barbados

Barilotti, Steve

Barland, Michel

Barreda, Sergio “Gordo”

Barry, Michael

Bartholomew, Wayne

Baxter, Jackie

Bay of Bengal

Beach Boys, The

Beacham, Debbie

beachboys

beachbreak

Beachcomber Bills Grand Prix

Beachley, Layne

beavertail

Becker, Phil

Bedford-Brown, Stuart

Belgium

Bells Beach

Bendall, Ma and Pa

Bennett, Barry

Benson, Becky

Benson, Blanche

Benson, Linda

Bermuda

Bertlemann, Larry

Film, video, magazines, television, and the internet have proven to be the most popular media outlets for surfing, but the sport has also been consistently well served by books. Surfing was first brought to the attention of the English-speaking world in Volume II of 

, the serialized and wildly popular accounts of Captain James Cook's exploratory voyages across the Pacific Ocean, from Tasmania to the Arctic. Upon seeing a native canoe surfer riding waves in Tahiti, Cook wrote, "I could not help concluding that this man felt the most supreme pleasure while he was driven on so fast and smoothly by the sea." In Volume III, one of Cook's lieutenants writes about board-surfing in Hawaii.

Surfing was described in 19th-century books by American Henry Wise (

, 1850) and Isabella Lucy Bird of Great Britain (

, 1875). A dispatch sent by Mark Twain in 1866 to the 

 newspaper included an account of Twain's failed attempt at surfing, and was later reprinted in his 1872 book 

. "The board struck the bottom in three-quarters of a second without any cargo," Twain wrote, "and I struck the bottom about the same time, with a couple of barrels of water in me."

Jack London had better luck with his attempt at surfing during his first visit to Hawaii, and his account was published in a 1911 travelogue titled 

. London's dramatic presentation, with its descriptions of "bull-mouth monsters" (waves) and "Kanakas" (surfers), was a great boon to surfing's popularity in America.

 (1931), lifeguard Ron Drummond's 26-page instructional pamphlet on bodysurfing, has been called the first surfing book. The 95-page 

, published four years later by Wisconsin-born surfing icon Tom Blake, offers a far more detailed look at the sport, with sections on history, board design, and riding technique, along with dozens of black-and-white surfing photographs. 

, a 108-page photo book published by Los Angeles surfer/photographer John "Doc" Ball in 1946, was the first hardbound work to examine the sport in California. 

 (renamed Hawaiian Surfriders) have both been reprinted.

The large-format, photo-heavy coffee-table surf book, a perennial favorite, got its start in 1964 with 

 magazine founder and publisher John Severson. These kinds of surf books can be divided into a number of categories, including history (

Girl in the Curl: A Century of Women in Surfing

Maverick's: The Story of Big-Wave Surfing

 (1965), by 1964 world champion Midget Farrelly of Australia, had some biographic information, but 

 (1967), by California surf stylist Phil Edwards, is rightly considered to be surfing's first real biography. As of 2012, more than three dozen surf world biographies or autobiographies had been written, including titles on Duke Kahanamoku, Fred Hemmings, Nat Young, Wayne Bartholomew, Tom Blake, Mark Richards, Tom Carroll, Pam Burridge, Greg Noll, Rick Grigg, Mike Doyle, Mark Occhilupo, Kelly Slater, Mick Fanning, and Lisa Anderson. Daniel Duane's 1996 book 

, the first surfing memoir, was excerpted in the 

. Other semi-biographic first-person books featuring surfing include 

 (1963), by Bill Cleary and David Stern, was the sport's first guidebook. Other popular titles in the genre include

 series (1990-present). More than two dozen surfing instruction books and how-to manuals have been published since the mid-'60s, along with a smaller number of books on surf forecasting/wave formation, and how-to books on surfboard construction and repair.

 (1957) is the best-known title in the small and highly uneven canon of surf fiction. While Columbia Pictures' movie version of 

 was maligned as frivolous and inauthentic, Kohner's book is smart, funny, lively, and full of neatly sketched characters. 

 (Tim Winton, 2008) were all critically acclaimed works of fiction set at least partially in the surfing world. Not as well received, but hot sellers nonetheless, were the "pulp" surfing books of the mid-'60s and early '70s, including

Children's surfing books have been dependably ignored by the surf press, but are often charming and well-crafted. 

 (Edward Ormondropy, 1969), tells the story of an intrepid mouse who runs away from home and becomes a world-famous surfer; 

 (Quentin Blake, 1997) is about a cheerfully acquisitive woman who glides across a 15-foot swell towing her dog, a beach umbrella, a wind sock, and a horn, and performs "a California slither, a Bali serve [and] a Waikiki flip" while heading for the beach. In 2003, Roxy, surf wear giant Quiksilver's women's division, began publishing the 

 series which featured a group of adolescent girl surfers coming of age in the waves.

The 1990s and early '00s brought a small explosion of new surf books, with a broadening of subjects and formats. Some books were available in bookstores, though most were sold in surf shops or by mail order, or on the internet; categories included interviews and profiles (

, 1994). By the mid-2000s, a renewed boom in surf culture popularity brought a host of new surf world memoirs and non-fiction titles to bookstore shelves, including 

 (Susan Casey, 2010), which became a New York Times bestseller. William Finnegan, a long-time 

 writer, won a Pulitzer Prize for his 2015 memoir 

Chronicle Books in San Francisco has released more surf books than any other name-brand publisher, with titles including 

San Onofre to Point Dume: Photographs by Don James

The Perfect Day: 40 Years of Surfer Magazine

 (1965), originally published by Coward-McCann and released in paperback by Ballantine, sold more than 300,000 copies worldwide, making it by far the best-selling book on the sport. By the early '90s, early surfing books were being actively collected, traded, auctioned, and sold. First-edition copies of Blake's

, by the end of the decade, sold for between $2,000 and $4,000. 

 (2001) includes a section on collectible books.

In 2011, the revised edition of Bethany Hamilton's autobiography 

, pushed by the just-released movie of the same name, hit the top of the New York Times bestseller list.

books and surfing

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Encyclopedia of Surfing

History of Surfing

Interviews

Features

The Sunday Joint

Encyclopedia of Surfing

History of Surfing

Interviews

Features

The Sunday Joint