Fen Montaigne: Fraser's Penguins: A Journey to the Future in Antarctica

Fen Montaigne is a journalist and author whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, National Geographic, Outside, Smithsonian, and The Wall Street Journal. A former Moscow bureau chief of The Philadelphia Inquirer, he is the author of Reeling in Russia and has co-authored two other books. For his work on Fraser's Penguins, Montaigne was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006. He now works as senior editor of the online magazine Yale Environment 360. From: Macmillan Publishing. In December, 2010, the author and his latest book, Fraser's Penguins: A Journey to the Future in Antarctica., was a guest on the NPR program, Talk of the Nation. The podcast of that show is embedded just below.



Also in December of 2010, The New York Times wrote this about the book and author: In the austral summer of 2005-6, the veteran magazine journalist Fen Montaigne traveled to Palmer Station in Antarctica to work with the highly regarded polar ecologist Bill Fraser. For nearly five months, Montaigne gamely weighed and banded Adélie penguins and their predators, attached radio tags to feathers, dodged shooting streams of gack (giant-petrel vomit), sifted through guano in search of silverfish otoliths and reveled in the sensory delights of “the most alien and beautiful place on the planet.” But this is no straightforward work of natural history with Fraser as heroic guide. It’s a morality tale, in which Fraser plays an unsociable Cassandra who’s entrusted his tidings to a sympathetic messenger. Luckily for readers, Montaigne has wrapped his portrait of a place on the brink of oblivion inside a penguin love fest.

Some Books Considered - Program 074 from TPR: Some Books Considered

Travis E. Poling and co-author Paul W. Hightower’s book is a guide to nearly three dozen breweries, microbreweries, and brewpubs across Texas. The book also provides information about the wide variety of beer styles available in the state. Travis Poling talks about the history of beer in Texas, the recent Craft Beer Movement and shares his thoughts about the future of beer making in the Lone Star State. More information is available at beeracrosstexas.com.

Download the podcast here. See also: The Beer Book, I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell, How to Brew: Everything You Need To Know To Brew Beer Right The First Time, Tasting Beer: An Insider's Guide to the World's Greatest Drink

Books of The Times: The Inner Lives of Airports and Those Who Wander Through Them from NYT > Books by By DWIGHT GARNER

There’s a funny, revealing moment in Alain de Botton’s new book, “A Week at the Airport,” when he discovers that the largest bookstore at Heathrow Airport, in London, does not stock his books. He decides to have a conversation with Manishankar, the shop’s manager, about what else might be available. “I explained,” Mr. de Botton writes, “that I was looking for the sort of books in which a genial voice expresses emotions that the reader has long felt but never before really understood; those that convey the secret, everyday things that society at large prefers to leave unsaid; those that make one feel somehow less alone and strange.”

Read the full NYT piece here. See also: The Art of Travel, The Architecture of Happiness (Vintage)

Vanished Venues: Max's Kansas City from WNYC's Soundcheck by listenerservices@wnyc.org (WNYC, New York Public Radio)

From the mid-1960s to the early '80s, Max's Kansas City was an artists haven that welcomed Andy Warhol, writer William S. Burroughs and musicians like the New York Dolls and Madonna. As part of this week's series on New York's bygone concert halls and nightclubs, we look back at Max's, its legendary back room and its generous bar tabs. We talk with Steven Kasher, gallery owner and editor of the photo book Max’s Kansas City: Art, Glamour, Rock and Roll.

Listen to the podcast here. Download the podcast here.