The Wave is based on a
true incident that occurred in a high school history class in Palo Alto,
California, in 1969. For three years afterward, according to the teacher, Ron Jones, no one talked about it. “It was,” he said, “one of the
most frightening events I have ever experienced in the classroom.”
“The Wave” disrupted an entire school. The novel dramatizes the incident, showing how the
powerful forces of group pressure that have pervaded many historic movements and cults can persuade people to join such movements and give up their individual rights in the process— sometimes causing great harm to others. The full impact on the students of what they lived through and learned is realistically portrayed in the book that follows.