Product Description

**Winner of the?2016 Pulitzer Prize for Autobiography**

Reading this guy on the subject of waves and water is like reading Hemingway on bullfighting; William Burroughs on controlled substances; Updike on adultery. . . . a coming-of-age story seen through the gloss resin coat of a surfboard. Sports Illustrated

Included in President Obamas 2016 Summer Reading List?
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Barbarian Days?is William Finnegans memoir of an obsession a complex enchantment. Surfing only looks like a sport. To initiates it is something else: a beautiful addiction a demanding course of study a morally dangerous pastime a way of life.?
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Raised in California and Hawaii Finnegan started surfing as a child. He has chased waves all over the world wandering for years through the South Pacific Australia Asia Africa. A bookish boy and then an excessively adventurous young man he went on to become a distinguished writer and war reporter.?Barbarian Days?takes us deep into unfamiliar worlds?? some of them right under our noses?off the coasts of New York and San Francisco. It immerses the reader in the edgy