All for a Few Perfect Waves

A Los Angeles Times bestseller, David Rensin's biography reveals the audacious life and legend of rebel surfer Miki Dora.

"The most complete portrait of Dora ever painted, but also a solid recounting of surfing's original boom years and a thin, peculiar slice of Americana in the late 1950s and early 60s . . . All for a Few Perfect Waves is much more than just another day at the beach." —Los Angeles Times Book Review

For twenty years, Miki "Da Cat" Dora was the king of Malibu surfers—a dashing, enigmatic rebel who dominated the waves, ruled his peers' imaginations, and who still inspires the fantasies of wannabes to this day. And yet, Dora railed against surfing's sudden post-Gidget popularity and the overcrowding of his once empty waves, even after this avid sportsman, iconoclast, and scammer of wide repute ran afoul of the law and led the FBI on a remarkable seven-year chase around the globe in 1974. The New York Times named him "the most renegade spirit the sport has yet to produce" and Vanity Fair called him "a dark prince of the beach."


To fully capture Dora's never-before-told story, David Rensin spent four years interviewing hundreds of Dora's friends, enemies, family members, lovers, and fellow surfers to uncover the untold truth about surfing's most outrageous practitioner, charismatic antihero, committed loner, and enduring mystery.

"Miki took to his grave many stories that no one will ever know, but this book will also tell many and give new insight into his life." —Kelly Slater, best-known surfer in the world