16 Best Surf Books of All Time

Riding a wave, aka surfing, is nearly ineffable, indescribable. Despite that, the authors featured in our list of the 16 best surf books of all time did a pretty damn good job of describing the act of surfing (and its more profound significance) to the general public.

Only a surfer knows the feeling, yet most surfers struggle to express that feeling in the written word. Until recently, the surf literature genre lacked both breadth and depth. This reflects just how difficult it is for the average writer to convey their surf stoke in a relatable way. 

Note: We’ve cherry-picked some of our favorite quotes from many of the books listed below in our curated list of surf quotes that speak to the soul.

So, if you’re visiting us here at Bodhi Surf + Yoga shortly, we highly recommend picking up a few (or all) of these books to enjoy before, during, and after your trip.

The 16 Best Surf Books of All Time (newest to oldest)

1. Turn and Go! 50 Years of Surf Writings by Steve Pezman (2022)

This surf book is a collection of writings spanning five decades from author Steve Pezman, founder and editor of The Surfer’s Journal. It also includes interviews and stories about some of surfing’s greatest riders, shapers, designers, producers, and locales.

This compilation contains over 30 of Pezman’s best essays from the 1970s until the book’s release in 2022.

Sample: For the most part a ridden wave is a silent occurrence, but for the sound of the wave breaking. All the dynamics disappear, quickly absorbed into the ocean’s movements, and there is no lasting recollection of what occurred except in the mind of those who saw it happen. If expressing what I think of it all provokes the reader to consider their own point of view—or better yet, form a new one—I would consider that a worthy result.

2. Women Making Waves: Trailblazing Surfers In and Out of the Water by Lara Einzig (2022)

In this visually stunning coffee table surf book, author Lara Einzig profiles more than two dozen inspiring women who are redefining what it means to be a female surfer in today’s world. Women Making Waves features some of surfing’s most notable female athletes and water women from across the globe. Including big wave chargers like Maya Gabeira, stylish longboarders like Danielle Black Lyons, and environmental activists like Lauren L. Hill.

Sample: The women featured here are an eclectic, diverse group from around the world, each with their own intimate relationship to the ocean. They are real women: diverse in age, ethnicity, religion, backgrounds, opinions, and surfing abilities. I met with world champions, big-wave record-holders, mothers, adventurers, industry leaders, artists, doctors, and activists. They are riding giants, defying norms, dismantling the establishment, fighting for diversity and equality, and calling out injustices. 

What connects these women is the sisterhood of surfing. They may take to the water for vastly different reasons, but the practice offers them each the same profound reward. Surfing is simultaneously challenging, calming, healing, and humbling. 

It both magnifies and microscopically sharpens your focus. It reveals a strength from within that otherwise might remain hidden. And it offers a space for meditation and perspective. Each time you enter the water, you return to the shore—transformed.

3. AFROSURF by Mami Wata (2021)

AFROSURF is a book that explores the diversity of the surfing experience as it plays out in Africa.

“A visual mind bomb packed with over 200 photos, 50 essays, surfer profiles, thought pieces, poems, playlists, photos, illustrations, ephemera, recipes, and a mini-comic,” offering a glimpse into the history and culture of African surfers, whose context and experiences have been overlooked and under-reported for millennia. 

Moreover, all proceeds from this book support two African surf therapy organizations: Waves for Change and Surfers Not Street Children. 

Sample: Much of the last sixty years has told us that you need to emulate being from Southern California, or the south coast of Australia, to fit the description of being a surfer. African surf culture will redefine the manner in which people perceive the activity known as surfing and the lifestyle that comes with it.

4. The Drop: How the Most Addictive Sport Can Help Us Understand Addiction and Recovery by Thad Ziolkowski (2021)

Award-winning author Thad Ziolkowski uncovers the hidden connections between surfing, addiction, recovery, and healing in his recent surf book (see On a Wave).

The Drop illuminates surfing as both addiction and a means to overcome addiction—a thrilling and immersive activity saturated with dopamine and other feel-good neurochemicals.

Sample: Though not a particularly dangerous sport, surfing puts the brain on high alert by dint of being conducted in the ocean, where the risk of death by drowning or injury, while statistically small, is nonetheless real and ever-present. 

The survival-obsessed brain responds by paying very close attention to everything in its perceptual field, with the result that self-talk and dark preoccupations are pushed to the periphery and quieted. 

It’s this natural and irresistible concentration in the present moment that is one of the most powerful things about surfing for the recovering addict—silence, focus, a kind of chastened vigilance.

5. She Surf: The Rise of Female Surfing by Lauren L. Hill (2020)

Much like Women Making Waves, a beautifully made coffee table book featuring lady sliders, She Surf celebrates the diverse, vibrant, and engaged community of female surfers worldwide.

This book highlights what it feels like (rather than looks like) to be a woman in modern-day surf culture, addressing historical, social, and environmental issues along the way. 

Sample: Despite the positive impact of surfing in many regards, its dominant narratives have also presented some challenges: the comparison between men and women, the objectification of the latter, and the disregard for the preservation of the natural world and the cultural differences that define it.

6. Swell: A Sailing Surfer’s Voyage of Awakening by Captain Liz Clark (2018)

Ten years and 20,000 miles—that’s how long professional surfer and Patagonia ambassador Captain Liz Clark spent sailing the high seas in search of surf and self. Swell recounts Clark’s decade-long surfing and sailing adventure with words and photos from the Captain herself. 

Sample: Suddenly thousands of raindrops fall before me. The movement of the expanding rings through the rosy water triggers some kind of trance. I watch the droplets transform into mini-swells of energy—varying wave amplitudes crossing over each other from all directions. 

Dynamic, chaotic, brilliant. Both infinite and finite at once. 

Time freezes and it feels as if my consciousness is floating. I am the raindrop, and the cloud, and the sky, and the setting sun. On this unusual frequency, I feel the connectedness of all things, a sensation of deep belonging. All one and simultaneously separate. 

Feeling becomes understanding—this great dichotomy dissolves. In this strange, brief moment, I am expansive like the Milky Way, minute like plankton, powerful like the tides, as solid as the volcanic crater, fragile like a spider’s web, patient like the trees, and empty as a cloudless sky.

7. All Our Waves Are Water: Stumbling Toward Enlightenment and the Perfect Ride by Jaimal Yogis (2017)

Another surf travel memoir from the author of Saltwater Buddha, All Our Waves Are Water, recounts Jamail Yogis’ search for mystery and meaning in life.

Using surfing, travel, yoga, literature, and the teachings of the Buddha as his tools of discovery, Yogis can “stumble toward enlightenment” while pursuing the perfect ride.

Sample: As the wave only exists as the memory of wind transferring between particles, we are the memory of some primordial, beginningless exhale (the cause that caused the Big Bang and every Big Bang before it). And we only exist as separate entities insofar as this breath has evolved us to perceive ourselves that way.

8. Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan (2015)

Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize, Barbarian Days is a beautifully written globe-trodding memoir by surfer and journalist William Finnegan. 

Considered by many (including myself) to be the best surf book of all time, Barbarian Days takes the reader on a pre-internet surf journey across the globe. Finnegan visits some of the best surf breaks in the world, including Hawaii, California, Fiji, Australia, Bali, South Africa, Portugal, and New York.

Sample: But my utter absorption in surfing had no rational content. It simply compelled me; there was a deep mine of beauty and wonder in it. Beyond that, I could not have explained why I did it. 

I knew vaguely that it filled a psychic cavity of some kind—connected, perhaps, with leaving the church, or with, more likely, the slow drift away from my family—and that it had replaced many things that came before it. I was a sunburnt pagan now. I felt privy to mysteries.

9. Bend to Baja: A Biofuel Powered Surfing and Climbing Road Trip by Jeff Johnson (2015)

Bend to Baja chronicles the unconventional journey of a group of adventurous surfers—Jeff Johnson and the Brothers Malloy (Chris, Keith, and Dan)—as they search for waves and rock walls along the Pacific Coast of North America. 

As the book’s title suggests, this epic surfing and climbing road trip is powered by a biodiesel fuel engine. The crew drives from Central Oregon through California and Mexico, logging many exciting stories and beautiful photos. 

Sample: The sun set without ceremony as the truck bobbed down a dark coastal road, passing farms and small outpost towns. We’d spent a long day in the ocean. Keith and I needed sleep. At a spot that seemed good enough, Keith pulled off the road and backed the rig into a small gully lined with ice plant. 

He killed the lights and the engine, and we stepped out onto dirt. We could hear waves pounding against the cliff below. I turned the stereo up and left the doors wide open. 

Keith grabbed some beers and his guitar and settled onto the tailgate. Under a full yellow moon we sat for hours, listening to the surf between songs, laughing at ourselves while our tired eyes tried to focus on swell lines that marched silently across the moonlit sea.

10. Slow Is Fast: On the Road At Home by Dan Malloy (2013)

Slow Is Fast documents a 50-day, 700-mile bike and surf trip taken by professional surfer Dan Malloy (and friends) along the coast of California. 

This epic surfing and cycling road trip gives the reader a fresh perspective on what it means to be an environmentally-conscious surfer searching for remote and hard-to-access waves on the California coast. 

The book includes over 100 full-color and black-and-white photographs—a portrait of California only accessible via human-powered travel. 

Sample: Surf travel is by practice nonlinear. To find a good wave, one slowly traces a variegated coastline; meandering, halting, backtracking. Steinbeck called it “vacilando”—setting out for somewhere but not particularly concerned about getting there. 

11. The Plight of the Torpedo People by Keith Malloy et al. (2012)

By far the best book on bodysurfing in existence, The Plight of the Torpedo People is a collection of bodysurfing photographs, frame grabs, and personal essays documenting the making of Keith Malloy’s film, Come Hell or High Water—the first feature-length film to be made about the sport of bodysurfing. 

The plight of the Torpedo People depicts what it feels and looks like to ride waves in the most straightforward and purest form.

Sample: Rarely have I had the opportunity to photograph something as pure as bodysurfing. It’s the most stripped down form of wave riding—no logos to capture and no money to be made. It’s not like these guys are paying mortgages with their bodysurfing careers, and that’s just the way they like it. To the outside world bodysurfing might be seen as eccentric behavior, but as a photographer I was grounded by the experience of creating these images. It reminded me of what’s important in life and why I love to be in the ocean.

12. The History of Surfing by Matt Warshaw (2010)

If you are new to the sport of surfing, then Matt Warshaw’s History of Surfing is one of the absolute best surf books. This nearly 500-page book will provide the context to understand surfing’s historical roots, turning points, essential characters, cultural significance, and future trajectory. 

Warshaw’s writing is engaging and enjoyable, and the book contains over 250 rare photographs to keep you entertained along the way. 

Sample: Unlike ancient Peru, where wave-riding was a byproduct of work and probably limited to fishermen, surfing in Hawaii was both recreational and universal. The ruling class had special boards and exclusive breaks, but even so, the sport was the island nation’s great common denominator. 

Surfing was practiced with equal enthusiasm (and class-leveling nudity) by farmers, warriors, weavers, healers, fishermen, children, grandparents, chiefs, and regents. As one early Western visitor wrote, “The entire population of a village would at certain hours resort to the sea-side to indulge in, or to witness, this magnificent accomplishment.”

Note: Read Bodhi Surf + Yoga’s History of Surfing.

13. Saltwater Buddha: A Surfer’s Quest to Find Zen on the Sea by Jaimal Yogis (2009)

A coming-of-age adventure story to be enjoyed by surfers and landlubbers alike, Saltwater Buddha documents Jaimal Yogis’ growth as a surfer and spiritual man. 

Like many of us here at Bodhi Surf + Yoga, Jaimal views surfing as a spiritual act—his pursuit of riding ocean waves ultimately teaches him how to ride life’s waves (ups and downs) more gracefully. 

Full of beautifully written and engaging surf stories, Yogis is a master of highlighting and relaying the more profound significance of his surfing experience and how it has informed his overall approach to life.

Sample: The ocean is in constant flux, and when you spend a lot of time in it you become like a floating bottle with a message inside; you know you’re going somewhere, sense you have a purpose, but you also know you’re at the mercy of the winds and currents, that surrendering may be your only good option.

14. West of Jesus: Surfing, Science, and the Origins of Belief by Steven Kotler (2006)

In West of Jesus, author Steven Kotler reflects on how his life devolved with a diagnosis of Lyme disease, which affected his physical health, his ability to work, his relationships, and, at times, his will to live…until he got hooked on riding waves. 

West of Jesus is an epic tale of how the author found his way back to mental and physical health through the flow-inducing act of surfing. 

Sample: At a time when everything else was gone, when nothing made sense and nothing worked, when suicide seemed a damn viable option, surfing saved my life—and I wanted to know why.

15. On a Wave by Thad Ziolkowski (2002)

On a Wave is an award-winning memoir about Thad Ziolkowski’s indoctrination into the surfing counterculture of the late 1960s. Like many of his fellow surfers at the time, Ziolkowski is drawn to surfing by its coolness and its shirking of societal norms. 

Surfing offers Ziolkowski an escape from his difficult home life, giving him a new, more evolved perspective of his family and himself.

Sample: I turn seaward to look for a wave. The last is often elusive; it’s as if, like a lonely child, one too proud to say simply, “Don’t go! I don’t want you to go!,” the ocean contrives indirect ways to prevent your leaving: lulls set in, or only below-average waves appear, and no one wants the last to be anything less than good. 

Eventually it arrives, separating itself from the darkening water like a living thing. I catch it, stand, turn once, then lie down and ride the white water to shore. I tuck the board under my arm, walk up the sand and, as ever, pause to look back at the ocean, whence I came.

16. The Art of Wave Riding by Ron Drummond (1931)

Published in 1931 by a California ocean lifeguard, The Art of Wave Riding was one of the earliest written attempts to legitimize the sport of bodysurfing. 

This bodysurfing “how-to” manual had an initial print run of about 500 copies and was the first published work on surfing (making it extremely rare and valuable). 

Drummond’s intention for writing The Art of Wave Riding was to usher in a bodysurfing renaissance: “Wave riding—without a surfboard—is a sport with which few people are familiar, and it is undoubtedly in its initial stages of development,” Drummond wrote. “There are no books of instruction on the subject, and at present, only a few of the more athletically inclined have become proficient wave riders.” 

For those readers looking to get into the sport of bodysurfing, this manual is an excellent place to start.

Sample: One has only to watch a swarm of bathers at any crowded beach in order to see that thousands of people are interested in the sport. Whenever a good wave for riding comes in, about half the people make an attempt to ride it, and only about one-tenth of one per cent of them even get started on it. 

It is this pitiful sight of thousands of swimmers, young and old, men and women, always trying and never succeeding, that has urged me to put into print a few hints that I hope will be of some help in teaching the enthusiastic beach-goers the art of body surfing, and thus increase a thousand fold the pleasure derived from ocean bathing.