Barbarian Days A Surfing Life by William Finnegan

A deeply-rendered self-portrait of a life-long surfer.

Barbarian Days is William Finnegan's memoir of an obsession, of a complex enchantment. Surfing looks like a sport, but that's only to outsiders. To initiates, it is something else entirely: a beautiful addiction, 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, 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—and dramatizes the edgy camaraderie of close male friendships annealed in challenging waves.

Finnegan shares stories of life in a whites-only gang in a tough school in Honolulu while his closest friend was...