This is a book about a lifelong passion for a sport known for being mystic, soulful, difficult to master, all-consuming, and wild: surfing. After spending his formative years in California and Hawaii, Finnegan embarks on a multiyear trip to the tropics. He surfs an unknown beach on the uninhabited island of Tavarua, Fiji, which eventually would become one of the surfing world’s most famous locations. He surfs Garangan, Indonesia, when the surf camp was little more than a mosquito-choked fire pit. He spends months on Australia’s Gold Coast and several years in South Africa. He writes of his stints at San Francisco’s rugged Ocean Beach and on Long Island, New York, where he finally settled as a staff writer for the New Yorker.

The book’s rich discussion of international travel, oceanography, and hydrodynamics provides nonsurfers with insight into the surfer’s mindset, although some of the autobiographical sections are a bit tedious. Finnegan includes very little about his international reporting on poverty, war, and Africa, and even less on his family life. Perhaps this is not surprising in that the book’s content mirrors surfing: Much of life plays a backseat to searching for waves.

Titled from 18th-century explorer James Cook’s description of Hawaiian Native surfers, whom he called barbarians for spending all day in the waves, this eloquently written book is like surfing itself—rich with detail, beauty, adrenaline rushes, near-tragedy, and gratifying moments of riding waves. It’s not a book about merging passion and profession, but more about following your passion and letting your profession tag along.