The world of surfing was scattered and niche until 1960, the year the California surfer and filmmaker John Severson founded Surfer magazine. It quickly became “the commons, the main fountain, of surf culture,” writes William Finnegan, author of the surf memoir Barbarian Days, in his introduction to a forthcoming coffee-table book that celebrates the magazine’s six decades in print. (Surfer shuttered in 2020.) The book was assembled by the photographer and former Surfer photo editor Grant Ellis, and features 350 images pulled from the magazine’s vast archive. The photos offer a mix of time, place, style, and people, from Mickey Dora to Kelly Slater to John John Florence. With Surfer, Finnegan explains, Severson aimed to “counter the Gidget movie version of surfing with something closer to the real thing.” He did, and this book is an ode to his success story. —Julia Vitale