The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks and Giants of the Ocean | Susan Casey

The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks and Giants of the Ocean | Susan Casey | A Book Without Any Real Narrative

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	The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks and Giants of the Ocean Susan Casey Doubleday, 2010 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 31 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

From Susan Casey, bestselling author of The Devil?s Teeth, an astonishing book about colossal, ship-swallowing rogue waves and the surfers who seek them out.

For centuries, mariners have spun tales of gargantuan waves, 100-feet high or taller. Until recently scientists dismissed these stories?waves that high would seem to violate the laws of physics. But in the past few decades, as a startling number of ships vanished and new evidence has emerged, oceanographers realized something scary was brewing in the planet?s waters. They found their proof in February 2000, when a British research vessel was trapped in a vortex of impossibly mammoth waves in the North Sea?including several that approached 100 feet.

As scientists scramble to understand this phenomenon, others view the giant waves as the ultimate challenge. These are extreme surfers who fly around the world trying to ride the ocean?s most destructive monsters. The pioneer of extreme surfing is the legendary Laird Hamilton, who, with a group of friends in Hawaii, figured out how to board suicidally large waves of 70 and 80 feet. Casey follows this unique tribe of people as they seek to conquer the holy grail of their sport, a 100-foot wave.

In this mesmerizing account, the exploits of Hamilton and his fellow surfers are juxtaposed against scientists? urgent efforts to understand the destructive powers of waves?from the tsunami that wiped out 250,000 people in the Pacific in 2004 to the 1,740-foot-wave that recently leveled part of the Alaskan coast.

Like Jon Krakauer?s Into Thin Air, The Wave brilliantly portrays human beings confronting nature at its most ferocious.

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Fantastic

I was a huge fan of Susan Casey's earlier book "The Devil's Teeth," and I like this book even more. She has done a great job in researching this book, and in the way that she structured it. Large portions are spent with champion surfers who are in search of the tallest possible waves to ride, and these are really amazing and well-reported, but Casey intersperses them with solid research from all around the world, from Lloyd's of London to a wave-researcher conference to a South African salvager outpost. Casey has structured and woven all of her elements together beautifully, and I felt like I was both educated and entertained.

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A Book Without Any Real Narrative

Susan Casey is an engaging writer and is, without question, an excellent magazine article writer. Her book, The Wave, comes across as a set of linked magazine articles, loosely joined by the idea of the power of the sea and of ocean waves. The ocean waves in The Wave are the huge waves surfed by "Big Wave" surfers, the "rogue waves" that sink ships and the freak waves in Lituya Bay, a fjord in Alaska. Other than the fact that these are all waves that exist in the ocean, there is not much similarity. Much of the book concentrates on the personalities and adventures of "Big Wave" surfers. Initially this is fascinating, but about half way through the book, it becomes repetitive as Casey provides yet another account of big wave surfer adventures (surfers in Hawaii, in Tahiti, in Half Moon Bay, California and in Baja California).

The other theme of the book, which is inter-cut with the accounts of the big wave surfers, is the rogue waves that sink ships (with a digression on freak waves in Alaska). Here again, Casey provides an interesting account of these maritime hazards (or disasters) and the scientists that are trying to understand them. Casey seems understand that rogue waves are very different from the waves that surfers ride, but doesn't really emphasize this because it would show how fractured her narrative is.

Casey attends some of the conferences on ocean wave physics where scientists attempt to understand the formation of the huge waves that are shipping hazards. The papers presented at these conferences are difficult for anyone outside the field to understand. However, Casey never arrives at even a summary understanding of the research work that she can clearly present to her readers, although she talks to a number of scientists. Again, we get a magazine article level summary, but nothing that the reader can sink their teeth into.

There is also a section on Tsunamis and the freak waves that occur in Lituya Bay in Alaska. Some of the recent, massive, Lituya Bay waves are easy to explain: when 300 million tons of ice and rock drop into water, a huge wave results. Other than the fact that these waves occur in water, they don't resemble surf waves or rogue waves. Except for "the awesome power of the sea" there is no reason that all of these wave types would be included in a book. In the end, the lack of narrative power and the endless adventures of big wave surfers make the books a struggle to get through.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

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