The Wave: In Pur­suit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean by Susan Casey

My rat­ing: 4 of 5 stars

A well researched and inter­est­ing account of 100-foot waves, the big ones that are expected and pro­vide an “Ever­est” for tow-surfers to climb and ride — and the unex­pected ones that come out of nowhere in a storm to sink giant super­tankers in less than a minute or tsunamis that wipe out whole cities.

The NY Times, best sell­ing author switches back and forth in the nar­ra­tive as she cir­cles the globe gath­er­ing data on and observ­ing the world’s biggest waves, from surf­ing exploits, to oceano­graphic sci­en­tists wave mod­el­ing, to Lloyds of Lon­don ships-lost-at-sea records.

I didn’t find it great lit­er­a­ture, but the mate­r­ial was inter­est­ing. She does a good job show­cas­ing the per­son­al­i­ties she worked with gath­er­ing mate­r­ial for the book.

I found the surf­ing parts par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing since many of the breaks on Oahu and Maui she describes were where I surfed (only small 5-10ft ones!) when I lived in Hawaii in the 70s.

Good bib­li­o­graphic appendix.

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