The Encyclopedia of Surfing

This volume is a gift to surfers, both neophytes and pros. Warshaw, a former pro-surfer and editor of Surfer magazine, offers the sport's first all-encompassing encyclopedia.""Cheater five,""""Malibu U,""""Gidget""--if you can name it, Warshaw's included it in his exhaustive catalog. There are entries for each physical part of the wave (such as the lip, curl and trough); detailed discussions of surf movies, magazines and books; types of surfboards, including both physical descriptions and the philosophy of surfing each (""animosity between shortboarders and longboarders has been present to one degree or another since the 1970s""); and bios of pro surfers and board shapers. Warshaw doesn't gloss over the sport's ugly sides, and devotes several pages to such topics as""violence and surfing,""""localism,""""surf rage,"" and""sharks and surfing."" He offers helpful information for each country, state or county where surfing is popular--from Oregon to Californian, Maine to Florida, and from the Great Lakes to Texas. This is an indispensable tome for any surfer.