Shipping Estimate
USA
- USA
- CAN
- USA
- CAN
Ships within 48 hours · Estimated delivery Jul 12 - Jul 17
For Your Every Summer RSVP, with Code: SUMMER15
Description
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life**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 Obama's 2016 Summer Reading List Barbarian Days is William Finnegan's memoir of an obsession, a complex enchantment.
**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 Obama's 2016 Summer Reading ListBarbarian Days is William Finnegan's 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. 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 camaraderie of close male friendships forged in challenging waves. Finnegan shares stories of life in a whites-only gang in a tough school in Honolulu. He shows us a world turned upside down for kids and adults alike by the social upheavals of the 1960s. He details the intricacies of famous waves and his own apprenticeships to them. Youthful folly--he drops LSD while riding huge Honolua Bay, on Maui--is served up with rueful humor. As Finnegan's travels take him ever farther afield, he discovers the picturesque simplicity of a Samoan fishing village, dissects the sexual politics of Tongan interactions with Americans and Japanese, and navigates the Indonesian black market while nearly succumbing to malaria. Throughout, he surfs, carrying readers with him on rides of harrowing, unprecedented lucidity. Barbarian Days is an old-school adventure story, an intellectual autobiography, a social history, a literary road movie, and an extraordinary exploration of the gradual mastering of an exacting, little-understood art. Praise for Barbarian Days "Without a doubt, the finest surf book I've ever read . . . But on a more fundamental level, Barbarian Days offers a clear-eyed vision of American boyhood. Like Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, it is a sympathetic examination of what happens when literary ideas of freedom and purity take hold of a young mind and fling his body out into the far reaches of the world." --The New York Times Magazine
"Incandescent . . . I'd sooner press this book upon on a nonsurfer, in part because nothing I've read so accurately describes the feeling of being stoked or the despair of being held under. . . . But] it's also about a writer's life and, even more generally, a quester's life, more carefully observed and precisely rendered than any I've read in a long time." --Los Angeles Times
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Group
Published: 04/26/2016
ISBN: 9780143109396
Pages: 464
Weight: 0.90lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.45w x 1.00d
Shipping Notes
- Free Standard Shipping on $100+ Orders to the USA.
- Except Preorder products are shipped in 48 hours.
- Delivery to the USA:
- Standard Shipping : 3-10 business days
- If time is of the essence, please consider selecting expedited delivery for faster service.
Exchange/Return Notes
- We offer a 30-day return/exchange service after receiving.
- Final sale items are not eligible for returns or exchanges.
- To process your return/exchange, please contact us at [email protected]
- Please click here for more details>>> Return & Exchange Policy
4.8 ★★★★★
Based on 337 reviews
Sort
Product Reviews
★★★★★ 5
BUY THIS BRAND
Style: Tropical Coconut
smells amazing - great SPF protection - absorbs into skin nicely without feeling greasy
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on December 9, 2025
★★★★★ 5
Love it!!
Style: Tropical Coconut
It smells really good, and works well!!
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on May 2, 2026
★★★★★ 5
Best Mineral Sunscreen
Style: Tropical Coconut
The only mineral sunscreen I’ve found that doesn’t leave a white residue. Smells amazing and pregnancy safe!!
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on November 27, 2025
★★★★★ 4
This sunscreen body lotion is quite nice.
Style: Piña Colada
This sunscreen body lotion seems to work well. SPF 30 is the highest I could find with moisturizing capabilities. The smell is a bit overwhelming when you first put it on but it then goes away... so why the added scent. I wish it were SPF 50 and unscented. Otherwise I would have given it 5 stars.
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on January 19, 2023
★★★★★ 5
My go to!
Style: Tropical Coconut
I freaking love this sunscreen, not only is the smell divine, but a little goes a long way. It doesn’t leave a greasy feeling or residue.
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on December 15, 2025