Audiobooks by David Gessner

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The Book of Flaco: The World’s Most Famous Bird

The story of Flaco, the Eurasian eagle-owl who escaped from Central Park Zoo and captured the hearts and imaginations of millions of followers around the world. Nature writer David Gessner chronicles the year-long odyssey of Flaco and the human drama that followed the owl who captured the imaginations of New Yorkers and people around the world. Though he'd spent his life in a cage, Flaco learned to survive in New York City by eating rats, squirrels, and birds. He was an immigrant coming from elsewhere to make it in the big city. Central Park, the island of green in an urban sea, was his new home territory. Flaco's urban adventure brought controversy, pitting those who felt he should be returned to the safety of the zoo against those who created the 'Free Flaco' movement. The birding world was fractured over the ethics of the online sharing of his location that brought scores of enthusiasts to view him each day. And his end—with a grim necropsy revealing Flaco had suffered a viral infection from eating pigeons and had multiple rodenticides in his system—serves as a Rachel Carson-esque warning about the harm we've done to our urban environments, inspiring the passage of long-sought legislation protecting urban birds and regulations meant to reduce the use of rodenticides in New York City.

David Gessner (Author), BJ Harrison (Narrator)

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Ultimate Glory: Frisbee, Obsession, and My Wild Youth

A story of obsession, glory, and the wild early days of Ultimate Frisbee. Before he made a name for himself as an acclaimed essayist and nature writer, David Gessner devoted his twenties to a cultish sport called Ultimate Frisbee. Like his teammates and rivals, he trained for countless hours, sacrificing his body and potential career for a chance at fleeting glory without fortune or fame. His only goal: to win Nationals and go down in Ultimate history as one of the greatest athletes no one has ever heard of. Today Ultimate is played by millions of people around the world, with professional teams in more than two dozen cities. In the 1980s, it was an obscure sport with a (mostly) undeserved stoner reputation. Its early heroes, key players like Kenny Dobyns, Steve Mooney, Tom Kennedy, and David Barkan, were as scrappy as the sport they loved, driven by fierce competition, intense rivalries, epic parties, and the noble ideals of the Spirit of the Game. Ultimate Glory is a portrait of the artist as a young ruffian. Driven by ambition, whimsy, love, and vanity, Gessner lives for those moments when he loses himself completely in the game. He shares the field and his seemingly insane obsession with a cast of closely knit, larger-than-life characters. As his sport grows up, so does he, and eventually he gives up chasing flying discs to pursue a career as a writer. But he never forgets his love for this misunderstood sport and the rare sense of purpose he attained as a member of its priesthood.

David Gessner (Author), David Gessner (Narrator)

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All the Wild That Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, and the American West

An homage to the West and to two great writers who set the standard for all who celebrate and defend it. Archetypal wild man Edward Abbey and proper, dedicated Wallace Stegner left their footprints all over the western landscape. Now, the award-winning nature writer David Gessner follows the ghosts of these two remarkable writer-environmentalists-from Stegner's birthplace in Saskatchewan to the site of Abbey's pilgrimages to Arches- braiding their stories and asking how they speak to the lives of all those who care about the West. What is the future of a region beset by droughts and fires, by fracking and drilling? What should be done about an ever-increasing population that seems to be in the process of loving the West to death? How might two environmental thinkers with radically different personalities-a competent, mature advocate (Stegner) and a monkey-wrenching anarchist (Abbey)-have responded to the crisis? Gessner takes us on an inspiring, entertaining journey as he renews his own commitment to cultivating a meaningful relationship with the wild, confronting American consumption, and fighting environmental injustice.

David Gessner (Author), Brian O'Neill (Narrator)

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