The Wave - Under the Microscope

The Wave

I like this sort of book, when done well: part biography, part memoir, part science, and part historical narrative. This is a book about waves - and, in particular, about giant rogue waves - and the people who study them, navigate through and around them, and surf them. This book looks at the confounding science of waves (did you know that waves, on average, have grown increasingly larger over the last fifty years?) and what this science - and its discoveries - might mean to us in the future. And yet it's also as much about the call of the sea, about the spiritual and metaphysical yearning to experience what the seas throw up at us. The core of the book is based on the author's experiences with the surfer Laird Hamilton and his friends, the world's greatest big wave riders. What does it mean to skim along beneath the drop of an 80 foot wave as it races to shore? Beautifully written, carefully researched, and personally experienced, this book is an interesting look at the endless motion across the surface of the world.