IT'S ONLY DROWNING

When a former speechwriter for President Obama starts surfing at the age of thirty-fivethe rough equivalent of beginning guitar lessons on your deathbedhe is taken on an unexpected journey in which he has to learn from the only other surfer he knows, his brother-in-law, Matt, a Joe Rogan superfan.

David, the Yale-educated writer with a sensible fear of sharks, and Matt, the daredevil electrician with two motorcycles, had always co-existed from a comfortable distance as brothers-in-law. Yet, as David wallowed in existential dread while America's crises piled up into a calamitously towering layer cake that was topped off by the pandemic, he couldn't help but notice that Matt seemed perfectly happy. When he wasn't making money rewiring Jersey shore beach homes, Matt was surfing waves at his favorite spots in the state. Quietly, David started taking surf lessons. For a few months, he suffered through painfully creative wipeouts on waves the height of daffodils. But to his own surprise, he soon became obsessed. And once he got a sense of the ways becoming a "real" surfer could change him both in the water and out, he set his sights on an unlikely goal: riding a big wave at Hawaii's famed, dangerous North Shore. To get there, however, he'd need help. IT'S ONLY DROWNING is a moving and poignant buddy comedy in the tradition of Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, as well as a richly drawn love-letter to the sport of surfing in the vein of William Finnegan's Barbarian Days. Anyone who has ever felt unmoored by our increasingly uncertain world will find something to resonate with in this book's message of embracing the thingsand the peoplethat scare us most. Litt is a New York Times bestselling author and a semi-finalist for the James Thurber Prize for American Humor. A former senior speechwriter for President Barack Obama, David was described as "the comic muse for the President" (L.A. Times) for his work on the White House Correspondents' Dinner. He's written for the New York Times, The Atlantic, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, TIME, and The Guardian, among other outlets, and now writes speeches and jokes for major political figures, athletes, Fortune 500 CEOs, and leading philanthropists. In addition, David was the head writer/producer for Funny Or Die D.C. from 2016 to 2018 and has toured dozens of cities as a live storyteller with The Moth. He's written and sold comedy pilots (including one based on his first book) for Comedy Central, ABC, and NBC, and is currently working on a movie.