Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Maren Wiederhold
Categories
Sports & Active outdoor recreation

THE SKATEBOARD LIFE

Neftalie Williams

Movers, Shakers, Makers & Rulebreakers: The Quintessential Story of Skateboard Culture

A highly-visual celebration and cultural overview of skateboarding through more than 65 profiles of the biggest names in the sport from one of the foremost experts on skateboarding in the world.

Skateboarding is a noun, a verb, and a culture that grabbed the public imagination and has never looked back. Its inclusion as an Olympic sport has only fueled the fire and enticed more people to take their first push and first breath as skateboarders.

The Skateboard Life reveals and revels in how skateboarding - still criminalized in many places - has permeated and elevated our global culture, influencing media, art, fashion, music, sports, business, and education. Through profiles and more than 100 striking photographs, "America's First Ambassador of Skateboarding," Dr. Neftalie Williams, provides a definitive look at the most influential voices of skateboarding, including legends such as Tony Hawk, Paul Rodriguez, Vanessa Torres, and Kareem Campbell, Olympians like Nyjah Huston and Sky Brown, artists including Mark McKee, the Michelangelo of skateboarding art; Spike Jonze, the auteur filmmaker; and Glen E. Friedman, the photographer behind some of the most iconic moments in skate. It also highlights activists like Briana King, Vogue model, artist, skater, Amelia Brodka, women's skateboarding entrepreneur and advocate, and Leo Baker, the unwavering knight for the LGBTQ+ community. Never before has this mega-roster of multi-generational, multi-gendered, and multiracial group of skaters and their impact on skateboarding and society been featured and discussed together in this depth.

Dr. Neftalie Williams is the Director of San Diego State University's Center for Skateboarding, Action Sports, and Social Change. With a background in both academia and a deep personal connection to skateboarding, writing, and photography, Dr. Williams has made significant contributions to the study of skateboarding culture. His research on race and skateboarding, conducted as part of the 2019-2020 USC x Tony Hawk Foundation project, was prominently featured in The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times. Currently, Dr. Williams provides consultation on skateboarding and action sports for Disney Studios and Burton Snowboards.

Available products
Book Published 2025-10-28 by Artisan

Comments

Professor Neftalie Williams delivers a comprehensive tour-de-force, The Skateboard Life, that etches the importance of the sport into a long future. It is clear to me that this book will become THE reference on the genre.

The Skateboard Life is an urgent affirmation of the power of sport to shape relations, and even to transform the world. In this profound, quick-paced excavation, Dr. Neftalie Williams draws from both his academic training and his work as a skater maven to bestow us with a vivid history of skateboarding culture. Williams tenders an enticing menagerie of skateboarding trailblazers and icons, brocading the past and the present into a powerful tapestry of ingenuity, solidarity, and rebellion. In doing so, he shows us what sport can achieve on this roiling, boiling planet.

A breathtaking new look at the modern skate world. Written with the authenticity and knowledge that only another skater could achieve, this book adds new layers of significance to the experience and cultural understanding of skateboarding.

The Skateboard Life is an encyclopedia on skate culture, those who have helped create it, and its future icons. It's a fascinating read for anyone interested in the sport, the style, and the history of what makes skateboarding so uniquely authentic.

There is an expression that great writing communicates by "showing, not telling." Dr. Neftalie Williams's The Skateboard Life is a masterwork of this method. Through a vibrant series of biographical sketches, stories, and photos, Dr. Williams shows how this sport holds the capacity to change the world as well as change us. Whether you can perform a crooked grind in your sleep or have never heard of Tony Hawk, The Skateboard Life is for anyone who cares about sports, politics, and the world they inhabit. One of the most important 'sports' books I've read in some time.