The Surfer And The Sage

Sometimes life’s waves knock you down; other times, life might seem to sweep you along powerless. But the choice is always yours to swim back up to the light. Legendary world champion surfer Shaun Tomson and international bestselling poet-philosopher Noah benShea join forces to offer you insight on a path of purpose, hope, and faith. This timely guidebook alternates between Tomson’s inspiring experiential essays and benShea’s spiritual commentary that lift the soul, all accented with stunning full-color surfing photographs. After losing his son, Tomson walked the bitter road of loss and crossed from darkness into the light. The Surfer and the Sage addresses the eighteen relentless, breaking waves of life, from loss and aging to relationships and depression, and guides you to transformation. It is not a list of rules to follow that guarantee success, health, or wealth, but rather a collection of advice from two guides who have traveled far and wide and suffered deeply, but still look forward to tomorrow with faith and hope.

In Surfer's Code: 12 Simple Lessons for Riding Through Life, world champion surfer Shaun Tomson shares the life lessons he's gathered from decades of surfing-from his boyhood adventures in South Africa to the world tour in the late 1970s to the business world today. For Tomson, surfing is a hobby, a sport, a religion, an obsession and more-it is a way of life. Tomson's life lessons have guided his career to the top of both professional competition and the world of business. Now, he shares these powerful lessons, born on the world's best swells, with all people-including those who might never step on a surfboard. These lessons are born of the collective wisdom of the surf community and are a powerful source of inspiration in the face of extraordinary challenges of every day life.

Many abodes can fall under the label of surf shack: New York City apartments, cabins nestled next to national parks, or tiny Hawaiian huts. Surfing communities are overflowing with creativity, innovation, and rich personas. Surf Shacks takes a deeper look at surfers' homes and artistic habits. Glimpses of record collections, strolls through backyard gardens, or a peek into a painter's studio provide insight into surfers' lives both on and off shore. From the remote Hawaiian nook of filmmaker Jess Bianchi to the woodsy Japanese paradise that the former CEO of Surfrider Foundation in Japan, Hiromi Masubara, calls home to the converted bus that Ryan Lovelace claims as his domicile and his transport, every space has a unique tale. The moments that these vibrant personalities spend away from the swell and the froth are both captivating and nuanced.

"Release any concerns that you have about this path you’re about to walk on, and just go into it with the curiosity of a child, knowing that you’ll come out on the other side as a new person, or to be more accurate, far more of the person who you truly are and have been created to be." Jack Valentine seemed to have it all. He made good money as an adman, and looked good doing it. He had a hot apartment, cool friends, even a slick car—at least until the hectic Monday morning a truck smashed into it, sending the critically injured Jack to the hospital. Everything happens for a reason, though, and Jack’s reason reveals itself in the silver-haired cancer patient who becomes his roommate one evening. The elderly man, Cal, shares his life story—one not dissimilar to Jack’s—of material wealth masking a gaping hole within. Cal ultimately found salvation through philosophy ("the love of wisdom"), and now offers to help Jack by prepping the younger man for the Final Questions we all must face: Have I lived wisely? Have I loved well? Have I served greatly? Presenting Jack with three plane tickets, each accompanied by a map marked with a red X, Cal sends Jack to meet with three great teachers, each of whom will help Jack answer one of the Final Questions—just as they once helped Cal. First, in Rome, Jack will meet "the Saint." Then a haunted beach in Hawaii introduces him to "the Surfer." And finally the grandeur of New York City sets the stage for his last encounter: with "the CEO." Along the way, Jack will learn to do his interior work, discover that our negative traits offer gateways to higher versions of ourselves, and understand that figuring things out in your head can distract you from the powerful whispers of your heart. Join Jack on his journey and step into the you that you were always meant to be.

Surfing, Jack London remarked, is “a royal sport for the natural kings of earth.” The greatest of those natural kings grant readers an audience in this glorious celebration of the world’s best surfers. Part exquisite picture book and travelogue to the top of the world, part biography and reference guidebook, Legends of Surfing profiles one hundred great surfers, men and women, from throughout the world. In life stories, and in exclusive interviews--which only the surfing icon Duke Boyd could have pulled off--stellar surfers such as Wayne Bartholomew, Tom Curren, Andy and Bruce Irons, Duke Kahanamoku, Dave Kalama, Gerry Lopez, Rob Machado, Mark Occhilupo, and Kelly Slater give us a rare firsthand look at what it’s like, in this crowded world, to “seek and find the perfect day, the perfect wave, and be alone with the surf and his thoughts.” (John Severson, Surfer magazine, 1960)

**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.

How to convert the power of “I Will” into a life-changing mantra The twelve stories in this book, taken from Shaun Tomson’s own life experiences in and out of the surfing world, offer the simple message—I Will—as a model to face life’s challenges and help you achieve your goals. All you need is to be encouraged to find your voice and commit yourself to positive values. The stories resonate with positivity and hope for the future, and are infused with the belief that even in the darkest time, light shines ahead to show you the way forward.

Fed up with teenage life in the suburbs, Jaimal Yogis ran off to Hawaii with little more than a copy of Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha and enough cash for a surfboard. His journey is a coming-of-age saga that takes him from communes to monasteries, from the warm Pacific to the icy New York shore. Equal parts spiritual memoir and surfer's tale, this is a chronicle of finding meditative focus in the barrel of a wave and eternal truth in the great salty blue.