Why am I passionate about this?
I’ve always craved outdoor adventure. My earliest preschool memories include frog hunting in the fields behind my house, and careening down hills around the neighborhood on my metal-wheeled skateboard. In middle school, I progressed to BMX, spearfishing and surfing. After college, I added snow and water skiing, windsurfing, and eventually mountain biking to the mix, and was fortunate to have a career that allowed time and resources to travel the world extensively seeking adventure. Now well into my sixties, I research and write about science, extreme sports, nature and philosophy in between daily hikes and mountain bike rides around the homebase and monthly journeys to destinations unknown.
Robert's book list on peak and transformative human experience
Why did Robert love this book?
As a lifelong surfer myself, I couldn’t wait to read William Finnegan’s Pulitzer-prize-winning memoir of his multi-decade pursuit of this lifestyle.
His successful career as an investigative journalist for the New Yorker and other publications further piqued my interest. Maybe he could help me explain to others my similar obsession, having spent over a year abroad during my younger days with a backpack and two surfboards in tow while hunting for perfect surf around the globe.
Well, he certainly delivered the goods. He shatters the “surfer dude” stereotype with this nuanced portrayal of his time studying meteorological and geographic possibilities to immerse himself in the timeless beauty of forces infinitely more powerful than oneself, just for that rare chance to feel truly alive.
5 authors picked Barbarian Days as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
**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…