"Surf Beat" is the first book to tell the story of the birth of surf music, and its persistent survival and reinvention in the face of decades of dismissal as a mere cultural aberration.  Surf music authority and author Kent Crowley uncovers the story of the initial emergence of surf music as first a local, then a national and international phenomenon, and its subsequent waves of popularity through the ensuing decades.  Paperback, 256 p.