Description

The Surfboard is Dan Kieran’s account of a week he spent in Cornwall building a seven-foot surfboard, even though he had never surfed a day in his life. He did this at a time when he felt he had reached his personal and professional limits: he needed to find a way to break through.

Interspersed with the story of making the board – the intricate craft he had to learn, and the clarity of mind that came with that challenge – are the reflections on the obstacles, rewards and realisations he encountered while starting and running a successful business.

This startlingly honest book is a finely crafted meditation on the importance of making things for their own sake and pushing beyond our preconceived limitations.

Publisher Review

Dan is the Sunday Times bestselling author of Crap Towns (the first viral internet phenomenon to find success as a book), The Idle Traveller (named travel book of the year by Germany's Die Zeit) and Three Men in a Float. Dan is the co-founder of Unbound and has given talks on creativity and entrepreneurship at the Do Lectures, Cambridge University and the European Parliament. For fans of Richard Sennett's The Craftsman, Robert Persig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Peter Korn's Why We Make Things and Why It Matters.