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Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life

by (Penguin Books)

(9,332 reviews)

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**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.

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  • We started tracking this book on June 18, 2015.
  • This book was $11.99 when we started tracking it.
  • The price of this book has changed 82 times in the past 3,207 days.
  • The current price of this book is $14.99 last checked 17 hours ago.
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  • This lowest price this book has been offered at in the past year is $12.99.
  • The lowest price to date was $1.99 last reached on June 16, 2022.
  • This book has been $1.99 3 times since we started tracking it.
  • The highest price to date was $14.99 last reached on March 25, 2023.
  • This book has been $14.99 23 times since we started tracking it.
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Additional Info

  • Publication Date: July 21, 2015
  • Text-to-Speech: Enabled
  • Lending: Disabled
  • Print Length: 466 Pages
  • File Size: 11,593 KB

We last verified the price of this book about 17 hours ago. At that time, the price was $14.99. This price is subject to change. The price displayed on the Amazon.com website at the time of purchase is the price you will pay for this book. Please confirm the price before making any purchases.