DA CAT - MIKI (MICKEY) DORA

books:


	• All for a Few Perfect Waves: The Audacious Life and Legend of Rebel Surfer Miki Dora David Rensin HarperEntertainment, 2008 - 475 pages average customer review:based on 15 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Miki Dora

I can hardly begin to tell you how very much I enjoyed this book about Miki. It is so well written and so rich in it's descriptions. I felt like I was there with him from Malibu to Africa and France. Knowing Miki in the 50's and 60's, all of my encounters with him were favorable. He loaned me surfboards, treated me and my daughter with courtesy and always had something interesting or funny to say. I wept reading the part about his beloved "Scooter Boy" and his own involvement with his death. What a tremendous tragedy for anyone to go through and especially Miki as that dog was the closest and most loved being in his life. You are a fantastic writer David. Miki was an incredible person and for you to capture him in the manner that you have is brilliant. His Dad must have high regard for your book. I would be proud that I had a son that was so unique and marched to a different drummer than anyone else. He had a pure, pure love for the sea and nature in spite of his many short-comings. In a very strange way he knew a lot about some of what is important in life.

Toni Donovan Colvin

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Excellent Bio

I'm not a surfer. I've never been on a board and until recently had little interest in surfing at all. I've only known of Dora for a few months but I pre-ordered this book as I knew he was someone worthy of understanding better.

The problem with writing a bio on Dora is that he was very private and very complex. Putting together anything that accurately conveys who he was is a monumental task. Was he a legend or a bum? Paranoid self-saboteur or rugged individualist? A guy who never quite got over his glory days at Malibu or mythic icon? Rensin doesn't discriminate or judge. By including all sides of Dora the picture is very complex yet complete - or as complete as it can be. He can't be written off as a self-absorbed con-artist and petty thief. Nor can he be written off as a hero. He was both of these things and much more and the author has done an excellent job of showing this.

Nearly all the negative reviews I've read here and elsewhere have been negative about the subject not the writing or the research. Disliking Dora is fine but don't blame writer. Does every bio of Hitler have a 1 star rating? No. Nor should you be knocking this book because Dora was a jerk.

And my question for Mr. Rensin: where's the movie? If I'm not mistaken the rights have been sold and I think an A-list actor owns those rights. Any chance of seeing Dora's story on the big screen anytime soon?

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DA CAT - MIKI (MICKEY) DORA - DAVID RENSIN

EXCELLENT BOOK! David Rensin wrote a very interesting book about Miki Dora as told by many people who actually knew Miki! David Rensin did not try to tell the story from his point of view or as being a judge of Miki Dora's life! The reader is free to take a peak into his life and then draw their own conclusion as to who the person Miki Dora actually was and what kind of life he lived. Lot's of interviews with Dora's friends and enemies and this book is his life and times through their eyes. Very well done!

Dora Wins!

Growing up in San Diego in the 60s and having read biographies of Greg Noll and Mike Doyle already, I idolized the surf scene and have followed it from my landlocked location. Dora is the ultimate enigma. Wants the attention when he wants it but wants to be elusive also. But what he really wanted more than anything, was the post WWII check out of society and never have to work, the ultimate Surf Bum but with taste. And really, he accomplished this. BUT, sometimes the methods to achieve this didn't square with the law so Dora was granted the opportunity to spend time in prison after an international search involving all major police bodies.

As he approaches his unfortunate death Dora seems to come to grips with who he is, the powers he possesses and the desire to set things right. And then after death, the ultimate surprise that is pure Dora. If you want to know about the surf culture at the beginning, USA in the late 50s early 60s, or a fascinating tale of a bizarre intersting person, read this book. Not a typical life, but a life well lived.

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STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

Yet another biographical mish-mash on DaCat - Miki Dora. Lots of commentary from fellow surfers, past friends, who were few & far between, and miscellaneous others. Doesn't tell anything more than what the other books have written. Still a good read, especially if it's the first book you've picked up on this man.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3

There will never be another surfer like Miki "Da Cat" Dora.

All for a Few Perfect Waves is the story of Miki "Da Cat" Dora, the dashing and enigmatic rebel who, for twenty years, was the king of Malibu surfers. He dominated the waves, ruled his peers' imaginations, and?to this day?inspires the fantasies of decades of Dora wannabes who began to swarm his pristine paradise after the movie Gidget helped surfing explode into the mainstream and changed it forever?many say for the worse.

Disenchanted, Dora railed against the ruination; angry that the waves were no longer his own, he fought back?or found better things to do. Dora was also an avid sportsman, raconteur, philosopher, traveler?and scam artist of wide repute. When, in 1973, he finally ran afoul of the law, he soon abandoned America and led the FBI and Interpol on a seven-year chase around the globe. At the same time, he never gave up searching for (and occasionally finding) the empty waves and spirit of the Malibu he'd lost. From homes in New Zealand to South Africa to France, he continued to personify the rebel heart of surfing and has been widely acknowledged as "the most relentlessly committed surfer of all time."

The New York Times named him "the most renegade spirit the sport has yet to produce." Vanity Fair called him "a dark prince of the beach." The Times (London) wrote, "A hero to a generation of beach bums. He was tanned . . . good-looking . . . trouble."

To capture Dora's never-before-told story, David Rensin spent four years interviewing more than three hundred of Dora's friends, enemies, family members, lovers, and peers?none of whom would previously talk in depth about him?to uncover the truth about surfing's most outrageous practitioner, charismatic prince, chief antihero, committed loner, and enduring mystery. The result is a riveting and living portrait of an uncommon character whose unique influence on surfing has never waned, and who became what most can never be: a legend in his own time.

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