David Rensin

David Rensin has written and cowritten sixteen books, five of them New York Times bestsellers.The latest is DON'T GIVE UP, DON'T GIVE IN: Lessons from an Extraordinary Life --coauthored with the late Louis Zamperini, hero of UNBROKEN (book and film). Published 11/18/2014Previously I helped write HOPE CONQUERS ALL, stories from the CaringBridge website.Before that, I coauthored with Dr. Brandy Engler, The Men on My Couch: True Stories of Sex, Love, and Psychotherapy. Earlier collaborations include Promises I Made My Mother, with Sam Haskell.Rensin's book, All For a Few Perfect Waves: The Audacious Life and Legend of Rebel Surfer Miki Dora, was published by HarperEntertainment on April 8, 2008. The softcover was published on March 24, 2009.According to Rensin, "There will never be another surfer like Miki 'Da Cat' Dora. For twenty years the dashing and enigmatic dark prince of California surfing dominated the Malibu waves and his peers' imaginations, blazing a rebel trail that would inspire generations to come. But when the sport exploded into the mainstream and surfing changed for ever, Dora's paradise was lost."Outraged at gridlocked swells and a scene that had grown ever more commodified, Dora eventually fled Malibu, seeking empty waves - and anonymity - beyond America. He'd also run afoul of the law, and he led the authorities on a seven-year chase around the globe. After his arrest and imprisonment, he would return to America once in a while, but never again to live, and in the end only to die.Dora would never give up searching for the spirit of the Malibu he'd lost. Wherever he made his home - New Zealand, South Africa, France - he personified the rebel heart of surfing and became a legend in his own time.This oral/narrative biography is based on interviews with more than three hundred people who knew Dora. It uncovers more truth than thought possible about surfing's most seductive and complicated icon. It is the story of one man's insistence on personal freedom - and the rewards and the costs that brings. It is also a story of innocence lost, of the growth and commercialization of the California lifestyle. Loner. Rebel. Wanderer. Legend. The life of Miki Dora is the greatest surf story never told.Rensin's previous book, The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up (Ballantine 2003), an oral history of what it's like to start at the bottom in a talent agency mailroom while dreaming of the top, spent ten weeks on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list. He lives in Los Angeles."