"Malibu" is a hiking book about the natural beauty and ecology of Southern California. It combines philosophy with a love of nature and California's unspoiled coastal beauty. It is also a tragedy, as that landscape is torn up and paved over for "progress," and Malibu is reduced to just another celebrity suburb of L.A.

"Malibu" is a mixture of a West-coast "Walden" and a modern day "In Praise of Folly." It is an epithany and a lament, lyrical and ludicrous. It extols the virtues of a surfer's life and decries the "illth" of modern materialism. It is a polemic on the core values of modern...