West of Jesus: Surfing, Science, and the Origins of Belief

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Bloomsbury Publishing USA, Dec 1, 2008 - Sports & Recreation - 272 pages
After spending two years in bed with Lyme disease, Steven Kotler had lost everything: his health, his job, his girl, and, he was beginning to suspect, his mind. Kotler, not a religious man, suddenly found himself drawn to the sport of surfing as if it were the cornerstone of a new faith. Why, he wondered, when there was nothing left to believe in, could he begin to believe in something as unlikely as surfing? What was belief anyway? How did it work in the body, the brain, our culture, and human history? With the help of everyone from rebel surfers to rocket scientists, Kotler undertakes a three-year globetrotting quest. The results are a startling mix of big waves and bigger ideas: a surfer's journey into the biological underpinnings of belief itself.
 

Selected pages

Contents

Section 1
3
Section 2
7
Section 3
10
Section 4
15
Section 5
17
Section 6
21
Section 7
29
Section 8
34
Section 25
124
Section 26
126
Section 27
137
Section 28
143
Section 29
147
Section 30
150
Section 31
155
Section 32
161

Section 9
37
Section 10
45
Section 11
51
Section 12
54
Section 13
60
Section 14
66
Section 15
70
Section 16
75
Section 17
79
Section 18
85
Section 19
99
Section 20
104
Section 21
107
Section 22
113
Section 23
116
Section 24
121
Section 33
164
Section 34
171
Section 35
181
Section 36
187
Section 37
192
Section 38
204
Section 39
217
Section 40
223
Section 41
228
Section 42
235
Section 43
240
Section 44
243
Section 45
247
Section 46
251
Section 47
261
Copyright

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About the author (2008)

Steven Kotler's novel The Angle Quickest for Flight was a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller and won the William L. Crawford IAFA Fantasy Award. His nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, GQ, National Geographic, Details, Wired, Men's Journal, Maxim, Salon, and elsewhere. He has surfed all over the world and lives in California.

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