Mavericks, Egypt, Jaws and Teahupoo (tay-ah-HOO-po) - Tahitian for "broken skulls".  The names alone are enough to tell you that there's a looming menace approaching.    When the wind and the sea conspire in just the right way, these are the sites of some of the biggest waves on the planet, maybe exceeding 100 feet in height at times.  Not necessarily the wisest place to hang out with your surf board.   In The Wave, writer Susan Casey tells the story of the men and women who seek out these big waves, hoping to master - or at least survive - them.

Author of the bestseller The Devil's Teeth - a book about great white sharks - Casey is an award-winning journalist and currently editor-in-chief of O magazine, a fact I never would have guessed after reading this account of one of the world's most macho sports.  

The majority of the 300 page book focuses on big wave surfing and Casey develops a friendship with Laird Hamilton, arguable the greatest big wave surfer of all time and a man who eschews publicity.   He spends most of his life waiting for the next big wave, traveling anywhere in the Pacific at a moment's notice.  She takes the reader to Hamilton's home lair on the north shore of Maui, but also to California, Tahiti, Mexico and to a truly crazy location called Cortes Bank, about 100 miles west of San Diego - in other words, the middle of the ocean - where giant waves break over a range of underwater mountains.    Sometimes Casey is on location, other times she gets vivid testimony from the surfers themselves.   Her descriptions of these life threatening exploits make for some thrilling reading. 

When she's not hanging out with the surfing crowd, Casey explores other kinds of "rogue" or "freak" waves, pursuing knowledge about tsunamis and hurricanes, trying to figure out how massive, sea-worthy ships can suddenly disappear on a shockingly regular basis, often without a trace.   She visits Lloyd's of London, the National Oceanography Center in Southampton, England and the coast of South Africa, known as "the graveyard of ships".   She also writes about Lituya Bay on the northern end of the Alaskan panhandle, a place that hosts tsunamis surprisingly frequently.   While these chapters - featuring scientists and insurance adjusters - aren't quite as sexy as the surfing chapters, I still found them very interesting and Casey uses these topics to balance out the book nicely. 

Casey also explores the idea that giant surf is becoming more common as the planet becomes warmer, due to more violent wind and storm conditions, possibly making the 100 foot wave a more frequent phenomenon.    Big tsunamis - the result of underwater earthquakes and landslides - may become more common as well, as the weight of rising sea levels actually deform and destabilize the earth's crust.   Her descriptions of various theoretical wave-induced catastrophes are downright terrifying.

As more of a science nerd than a surfing fan, if I'd known how much of the book was devoted to surfer dudes and their death-defying escapades, I might have been reluctant to read it.  But Casey does a fine job of making the surfing interesting and exciting and I'm thoroughly convinced that Laird Hamilton is one badass dude.   The Wave is a wild, well-written ride and gets a strong recommendation from this landlocked landlubber.

Recommended: Yes