The photo above is deceiving. According to a review on Surfline, Jim Heimann’s Surfing book, published by Taschen, measures 11.4 x 15.6 inches, weighs 15.6 pounds. That’s enough to make your legs go numb just holding it. But apparently, that’s not a worry.
The shear volume of visual content — along with crisp essays from Matt Warshaw, Steve Barilotti, Chris Dixon, Drew Kampion, Peter Westwick, and Peter Neushul — throughout the book ultimately make a powerful point that some other works of surf history have not: that the sport of surfing has never existed quite so far out on the fringe of American pop culture as the core often likes to think. Instead, surfing, since being hijacked from the Hawaiians, has been a quiet yet steady influencer of American culture for a century now, from its fashion to film, its music to art — even, I would argue, to its sexual revolution and evolution.
We’d like to say we’ll be adding it to our collection straightaway, but at $200 a copy we’ll just have to flip through someone else’s. We only spend that much on Taschen books that are filled with, you know, naked pictures.
[Link via Surfline]
