Houston, James (1933 – 2009)

Writer from Santa Cruz, California, best known to surfers as coauthor of Surfing: A History of the Ancient Hawaiian Sport (1966, revised in 1996) and A Native Son of the Golden West (1971). Houston was born (1933) in San Francisco, and began surfing in the early '50s while working on a B.A. in drama from San Jose State. He met U.C. Berkeley student Ben Finney at this time, and the two later collaborated on the scholarly Surfing: A History of the Ancient Hawaiian Sport.

Houston spent three ye...