A riveting and rollicking tour-de-force about the terrifying power of nature's most deadly phenomena — colossal waves — and the scientists and super surfers who are obsessed with them.

The New York Times bestselling author of The Devil's Teeth probes the dramatic convergence of baffling gargantuan waves that pummel oil rigs and sink massive ships, the extreme surfers willing to stare down death in order to ride them, and the marine scientists trying to unlock the physics of these waves, the climate changes that are provoking them, and what chaos they might wreak. Susan Casey explores the phenomenon of monster waves and how they have become an obsession for extreme surfers like Laird Hamilton — who serves as the author's guide as she takes the reader into the intense, white-knuckle world of 100-foot waves.


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History is full of eyewitness accounts of giant waves, monsters in the hundred-foot range and beyond, but until very recently scientists dismissed them. The problem was this: according to the basic physics of ocean waves, the conditions that would produce a hundred-footer were so far beyond rare as to virtually never happen. Anyone who claimed to have seen one, therefore, was engaging in nautical tall tales or outright lies.
 
Still, it was hard to discount a report from the polar hero Ernest Shackleton, hardly the type for hysterical exaggeration. On his crossing from Antarctica to South Georgia Island in April 1916, Shackleton noticed odd movements in the night sky. “A moment later, I realized that what I had seen was not a rift in the clouds, but the white crest of an enormous wave,” he wrote. “During 26 years experience of the ocean in all its moods I had not encountered a wave so gigantic. It was a mighty upheaval of the ocean, a thing quite apart from the big white-capped seas that had been our tireless enemies for many days.” When the wave hit his ship, Shackleton and his crew were “flung forward like a cork,” and the boat flooded. Fast bailing and major luck were all that saved them from capsizing. “Earnestly we hoped that never again would we encounter such a wave.”
 
The men on the 850-foot cargo ship München would have seconded that, if any of them had survived their rendezvous with a similar wave on December 12, 1978. Considered unsinkable, the München was a cutting-edge craft, the flagship of the German Merchant Navy. At 3:25 a.m. fragments of a Morse code Mayday, emanating from 450 miles north of the Azores, signaled that the vessel had suffered grave damage from a wave. But even after 110 ships and 13 aircraft were deployed - the most comprehensive search in the history of shipping - the ship and its twenty-seven crew were never seen again. A haunting clue was left behind: searchers found one of the München’s lifeboats, usually stowed sixty-five feet above the water, floating empty. Its twisted metal fittings indicated that it had been torn away. “Something extraordinary” had destroyed the ship, concluded the official report.
 
The München’s disappearance points to the main problem with proving the existence of a giant wave: if you run into that kind of nightmare, it’s likely to be the last one you’ll have. The force of waves is hard to overstate. An eighteen-inch wave can topple a wall built to withstand 125-mile-per-hour winds, for instance, and coastal advisories are issued for even five-foot-tall surf, which regularly kills people caught in the wrong places. The number of people who have witnessed a hundred-foot wave at close range and made it back home to describe the experience is a very small one.


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"Casey's sharktastic bestseller The Devil's Teeth announced the debut of a powerful voice in adventure writing, and her follow-up does not disappoint… [Her] writing on wave forces and maritime disasters is masterful."
—Outside Magazine

"[A] captivating hybrid - an intro to the mind-melting physics of waves and a ride-along with the scientists and surfers who chase after them… Fascinating."
—Men's Journal

"[A] breath-snatching thrill ride."
—Elle

"It's an exhilarating read, almost like riding a 100-foot wave yourself, but not nearly as dangerous."
—Garden & Gun

"Casey writes compellingly of the threat and beauty of the ocean at its most dangerous. [She] also smoothly translates the science of her subject into engaging prose. This book will fascinate anyone who has even the slightest interest in the oceans that surround us."
—PW

"This book is adrenalin. You don't want to surf the waves described herein. Read the book. It's safer that way."
—Eddie Vedder

"Like the surfers and scientists she profiles, Casey lived and breathed giant waves for years. Combine this kind of insane passion for craft with an uncanny ability to describe the indescribable and whisk the reader off to unimaginably surreal settings and scenarios, and you have the rogue talent that is Susan Casey. The Wave sucked me in like the undertow at Pipeline."
—Mary Roach, author of Stiff and Packing for Mars

"Reading The Wave is the closest most of us will ever come to the sensation of riding, or even seeing, one of these towering monsters of the sea. Itʼs exhilarating, astonishing, and, not infrequently, terrifying. Brace yourself."
—Candice Millard, author of The River of Doubt

"At once scary and fun, The Wave surprises at every turn."
—Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Field Notes From a Catastrophe

"Something is stewing in our seas, and Susan Casey - traveling, and in some cases swimming, all around the world - is eager to find out what it is. Both a rollicking look at the ocean's growing freakishness and a troubling examination of our ailing planet, The Wave gives new meaning to the term 'immersion reporting.'"
—Hampton Sides, author of Hellhound On His Trail


From the Hardcover edition.

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Introduction
The Grand Empress
Broken Skulls
Schrödinger’s Wave
Karma, Tiger Sharks, and the Golden Carrot
Wave Good-bye
Mavericks
“I Never Saw Anything Like It”
Killers
Heavy Weather
Egypt
Out, Way Out, on the Cortes Bank
The Wild Coast
At the Edge of the Horizon
Epilogue
 
Acknowledgments
Selected Bibliography


From the Hardcover edition.

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SUSAN CASEY is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Devil's Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America's Great White Sharks. She served as creative director of Outside Magazine, where she was part of the editorial team that developed the stories behind the bestselling books Into Thin Air and The Perfect Storm, as well as the 2002 movie Blue Crush. The Toronto-born Casey was also recently named Editor-in-Chief of O, the Oprah Magazine.


From the Hardcover edition.

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