Entirely too much surfer-worship. Way too much. Childish man-children, unable to converse in a dialect other than teenager slang. "Braa"? Seriously . . . these are men in their 40's. Please. One gets the impression that conversations and interviews quickly turn into performances staged for the author.
Even the simple science is questionable. " . . knots per hour . . "? The amount of time to fall 120 feet is not 4 seconds, and is not accomplished at 32 feet-per-second. This is the simple stuff, and is fraught with error. On second thought, maybe it's a good thing wave science was avoided . . . . .

I guess the topic itself it a tough one to cover, but this mix of a little science and a lot of surfer worship just never got under my skin the way "Born To Run" did. The narrator's style wasn't my favorite either; her management of Spanish words and translations in particular made my teeth hurt.

i bought this under the impression it was about waves. no its about bodies carved from granite, flashing smiles etc. etc.

no bland cliche about surfers is left unsaid. every dreary conversation recorded "that was real", "real gnarly". "his phone rang in the next room" with no sequitor.

unfortunately no conversation of any interest was included. maybe the editor was unable to deal with polysyllabic dialogue.

this book has been written to be read with a clanging 140db soundtrack of thrash metal playing in the background and immediately forgotten.

Then meet "The Wave." Another sports-related book that looks at the science, economics and personalities around big wave surfing. You come away feeling all-around smarter about the ocean, more fired up about surfing and inspired by these wave-riding cowboys who push their bodies and mankind to the limits.

Great description of the science and recreation of big waves. However, never have I heard so many Hawaiian words pronounced so badly by the narrator. Kirsten Potter could have saved herself considerable embarrassment if only she had spent five minutes running the names of local venues past even the most minimally informed Hawaiian tourist.

This sounded interesting however Audible will not let me download it after purchase. I am not sure what is wrong - but I am not happy.

Okay so it is not chock full of science, but it is scientific enough for someone who had a few geology classes in college to be reacquainted with familiar terms and events. The book also follows some interesting surfers and their experiences riding giant waves. Personally I thought it was a nice mix of people and science. For any geology teachers out there, this book has extra credit written all over it.

My 15 year old son and I read this together. There was enough big-wave surfing for him and nearly enough pop-science for me.

The surf part is a gentle story about middle aged men (literally in their 40???s) who ride the biggest waves in the world. This is a skill that probably takes 20 years to develop, as a result there are only a very few very young men (and one women) who do this. The author seems to have some kind of love (not explicitly sexual) for some of these men, which seems to artfully enhance the story. The central surfer is a man who literally lives on the stretch of beach that is has the most famous big break in Hawaii (a 60 foot face known as Jaws). One day in a big storm he rides a 110 foot face, at another cite, which is well beyond the official record, but no one is around to film it, and his friend nearly dies in the resulting accident.

The science part is not quite detailed enough to make since unless you already know a little bit about it. It helped that I did know a little about it. The probability distribution of waves has a much heavier tail than was ever imagined. And the world is full of really big waves that destroy modern ships and sea structures (but not so much the older designs), because in the 20th century we thought we???d come to understand waves and we optimized our designs to that understanding. In the last 10 (maybe 15 years) we???ve learned that our modern understanding was less right than the older empirical understanding.

It is true that climate change is making big waves bigger (my opinion), but this is incidental compared to the core science story. It???s a bit tedious that the book keeps returning to climate change. It???s like scientist discovered that Sasquatch is real, and oh yea by the way Sasquatch breading rates are down 10%.

For a book about waves, it covered a lot about surfing, not the rogue waves, their causes, effects, and accounts. Also I did not appreciate the "surfing vocabulary" that made the book "R" rated.

I liked the book, but it was not what I expected. From the title I thought it may be mostly about rogue waves, with the science and history about them. It did include this, but a lot of the book (maybe 40-50%) also included information & a focus on people who surf monster waves. The subtitle should probably be called, “In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks and Giants of the Ocean, and the Psychology of the Surfers Who Ride Them.”

Not that surfing is bad at all. If you are into surfing, you will absolutely love this book. However it was not what I thought the book would be. Granted the book description mentions surfing, but I did not think that a large amount of the book’s material would be devoted to it. At times the book’s focus was on the surfers and what they think, not on the waves themselves.

Occasionally I would get so bored about hearing about surfers and surfing, I would think, “Are we doing this again?!?” So I would skip ahead looking for when the author would again return to the study of freak waves worldwide and their impact.

Also in a few places some vulgar language is used. I know authors want to portray the "real world", but in my opinion the quality of a book goes down when an author can find no better way for expression. Definitely not one to listen to if you have some children around, such as riding with the family on a trip.

So I give the book a lower rating than most because of this. A surfer would give this book 5 stars.