Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents

by Marty Essen

Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents follows Marty and Deb Essen on a three-and-a-half-year-long adventure to some of the wildest places on all seven continents.

The American couple began crisscrossing the globe with the simple intention of searching for rare and interesting wildlife. When their travels coincided with the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the added element made them unwitting ambassadors for peace. Their experiences -- from amusing to life threatening -- changed their lives forever.

This is not your average travelogue. Marty Essen has written a book that entertains, informs, and poignantly reminds us that we all share a small planet.

Winner: Benjamin Franklin Award for Travel/Essay
Winner: Green Book Festival Award for Animals
Winner: National Indie Excellence Book Award for Travel/Essay
Winner: USA Best Books Award for Travel/Essay
Bronze: ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award for Travel/Essay
Bronze:IPPY Award for Travel/Essay
Minneapolis Star-Tribune Top-10 "Green" Book

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Nature, Biology

455 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Marty Essen began writing professionally in the 1990s as a features writer for Gig Magazine. His first book, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents, won six awards, and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune named it a “Top Ten Green Book.” His second book, Endangered Edens: Exploring the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Costa Rica, the Everglades, and Puerto Rico, won four awards.

His novels, Time Is Irreverent, Time Is Irreverent 2: Jesus Christ, Not Again! Time Is Irreverent 3: Gone for 16 Seconds, and Doctor Refurb have all become Amazon #1 Best-Sellers in at least one category.

His seventh, Doctor Refurb, was a Booklife by Publisher’s Weekly Editor’s Pick and a Top-5 Finalist in the Shelf Unbound 2022 Best Indie Book contest.

The Silver Squad, published in early 2025, is Marty’s eighth and most mass appeal book to-date.

Marty is also a popular college speaker. Over the past seventeen years, he has captivated audiences with the stage-show version of Cool Creatures, Hot Planet, performing it on hundreds of campuses in forty-five states.

Reviews

[Kasia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wasn't sure what to expect upon my first encounter with this book since I'm used to watching nature shows on TV and rarely get to read about them. This book turned out to be a wild and fascinating adventure of a married couple traveling though the seven continents, commenting on many steps of their journey with sharp eye for the tiniest details that made for a marvelous book. Marty Essen shows his deep talent for writing, his witty comments and jokes; descriptions of the people, places, even their dogs that went with them to Canada were so entertaining that I never knew what was coming up next. This isn't some boring nature book but a delicious seven course meal of the highest caliber. The book is easy to read yet is chock full packed with incredible information that can only be witnessed by the person who actually went to those places and experiences the cold, the hot and dangerous spots that hold so much allure to all of us.

First leg of the trip was Belize, located on the Caribbean Sea where they searched for deadly snakes and explored flora and fauna of the humid, tropical jungle followed by an amazing boat ride through the rivers of the Amazon. Next they visited Australia, savoring the red hot beauty and in search of cute marsupials followed by a 5,572mile drive to Canada and back with their adorable dogs where they slept in tents and discovered beauty that is closer to most Americans than they think. Up next was Antarctica, a magnificent place that so few of us get to experience, and with Marty and Deb it was a chilling and glorious landscape that wasn't as alien as it appears to be. Borneo, Europe and Africa were the last places that were covered, making me feel that the whole Earth was covered with footprints that belonged to the Essens. Their cheerful and sometimes scary encounters were so wonderfully written about, supplemented with marvelous photographs that I had to look at every time I cracked the book. They were also in perfect order with the book, giving the reader a transition into their trip from place to place, making it seem effortless even though it took them a few years to complete. It also helped that Marty took notes while traveling, making this book more authentic and adding little bits and pieces of conversation and jokes that could have been lost otherwise.

I felt closer to some of my favorite animals after reading this gripping book, felt the warmth and hospitality of people from far away places and best of all I feel like I got the front row seat at a ride of my life, thinking that perhaps one day I will visit those places and give them the same respect as the author did. Marty placed great value upon respecting our planet, not littering and being careful with wild animals, not bringing them any harm when they are being observed. People should go and visit places to take the beauty in, not to take it away and diminish it in any way.

This was a really exciting read, a wild life memoir filled with laughs and valuable information that will grip any reader and it made me feel like I went on an adventure of my own, reading about the close encounters with the most beautiful places and coolest animals.

[Angie Boyter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is worth getting just for the pictures! (But the book’s good, too.)
Marty Essen always wanted to be a herpetologist (snake scientist for us laymen), but he became a hard-working entrepreneur instead. At the age of 39, he decided he was missing something, so over the next several years, Marty and his wife Deb undertook an adventure exploring all the continents, with an emphasis on the wildlife of the world.
Essentially this is a travel book describing the couple’s explorations of our planet, from the Amazon and Antarctica through Belize and Borneo to Zimbabwe (despite the State Department’s warnings). It includes the societies they encountered and man-made attractions like the castles of Spain, but the real focus is on the myriad creatures they saw, animal facts, and animal descriptions, especially lower-order creatures, such as “a large white spider that looked like it were made entirely out of pipe cleaners and a caterpillar that mimicked a mound of gray belly button lint.”
What made this an especially delightful read were the personalities that came alive in the narrative. I knew I was going to like Marty on Page 13, when he finds a huge spider in the bathroom in Belize. A (expletive deleted) would have killed the spider; a more sensitive person would have said, “Wow” and then ignored it; Marty names it Spike and collects tidbits to feed it! And a little later he asks the resort manager to request of the guide, “Please tell Arturio that he’s not to kill any snakes we find.”
I enjoyed the newby travelers’ reactions as Marty and Deb took their first trips and experienced truly foreign environments for the first time. And anyone who has been on a group trip or stayed at a small resort can identify with the description of fellow visitor to Antarctica Mildred, whose sulkiness and ill humor no doubt earned her the vote for Person I’d most Like to Put on a Floating Iceberg. Deb and Marty, however, roll with the punches when they encounter some of the less attractive sides of travel. For example, when Marty becomes covered with penguin poo trying to get a photograph, he creates a song “I am Guano Man” to the tune of Black Sabbth’s song Iron Man. This is a guy who could make any trip fun!
So what is there not to like? Marty and Deb began their travels at the beginning of George W. Bush’s administration and continued during the early years of the Iraq war. Marty is NOT a Bush fan, to put it mildly. He mentions Bush and the war numerous times, including the fact that many foreigners he met along the way asked about the war. This might have been an interesting topic, e.g., “How People Around the World Viewed the US during the Bush Administration”, but it did not fit the overall theme of Cool Creatures and was not developed enough to be any more than an annoying distraction.
That small quibble aside, if you enjoy travel or wildlife or just an interesting real-life adventure, you will probably like Cool Creatures, Hot Planet.
PS A nice bonus is that the Kindle edition of this book is lending-enabled. But for $3.99, let your friends buy their own copy!

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you've read "Last Chance to See", or "Walk in the Woods" or "In the Sunburned Country" or other books of Bill Bryson's books, you are used to learning about nature in the midst of the cynicism and put downs. Bryson even says somewhere that he'd rather be home, that he doesn't really enjoy his adventures. Marty Essen has none of that. He loves what he is doing, and his wife does too. His enthusiasm and respect for those he encounters is refreshing. His honesty about himself and his companions is simply acceptance and wisdom. Even his own frustration brings a higher lesson of detachment and acknowledgement of the other person's value, knowledge and gifts. The humanity he carries throughout the book, the ability to honestly laugh at himself, to accept others and nature as he finds it, is a delight to read, but more importantly, we learn to honor other peoples and other creatures, from the bullet ants to the lettered professor, none of whom are perfect, but all of whom have something special to offer. I hope he writes more.

[Tami · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marty Essen was a workaholic who never took a day off work sick and rarely had a vacation. Then, he turned forty and had a self described "midlife crisis". However, unlike many men facing this problem, Marty didn't buy a fast car. Instead, he finally took a long overdue vacation with his wife.

Cool Creatures, Hot Planet describes the author's vacation, actually a series of vacations that took the couple to exotic locations on each of the seven continents. Each trip was hand picked not for relaxation and a little sun but for the best possible wilderness adventure and animal viewings (particularly snakes which the author seems to adore).

I completely enjoyed Cool Creatures, Hot Planet. I felt like I was along for the ride on each of his travels. The shear magnitude of the animals and natural habitats that this man got to experience is awe inspiring. The experiences are absolutely priceless.

[Noah Westfall · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are some good points I'd like to make about this book. Marty gets on a personal level with the reader, bringing them into everything he experienced while traveling the world. The way it's written makes you feel like you know Marty, his wife, and everyone they encounter. It almost feels like you're actually at these places, which is great since it's a book about traveling. The book doesn't really lose the reader with boring parts, it stays pretty interesting throughout. You won't regret reading this!

[Bryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot fascinating stories from a normal kind of guy. I like this book because the author does not come off as a macho, conceited explorer type. He has a fear of heights and a fear o deep water, and yet he still manages to have great adventures.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most interesting travel books that I've read in a while.

[Dennis Littrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

An adventure of a read

This is a beautiful book, beautifully designed, beautifully edited, and more or less beautifully--well, enthusiastically--written with a nice selection of color photos in the center. True, Marty Essen could have left out a detail here and there--the book is 455 pages long--but when you're chronicling the adventure of a lifetime and agonizing over what to leave in and what to leave out, you naturally leave it all in, including the corny, slightly off-color jokes, the reconstructed dialogue and the atmospheric interior monologues. I think everybody who knows Marty Essen will be glad he didn't overly censor himself because one of the many things that shines clear in this fascinating book is his irrepressible personality.

Almost always up early like a kid on Christmas morning, camera in hand, Essen throws himself into snake hunting, spider adoration, mud trekking, river swimming, mountain climbing, iceberg hopping, and close encountering with hippos, crocs, vipers, and literally hundreds of other wild creatures. I'll tell you one thing, I sure would NOT want to have to foot the bill for developing the photos. Judging from the text my guess is he took tens of thousands of photos along the way. Too bad there was room in the book for only 85 of them, but they are excellent shots of himself, his pretty wife Deb, some animals and plants and some people they met.

But what really counts here is Marty Essen's love for adventure and for the flora and fauna of our planet as is his determination that he miss nothing during his trek through seven continents and some islands with intrepid wife Deb at his side, more than carrying her load. (Lucky guy to have a wife like that. But I wonder how she feels about his revealing that she snores! See page--never mind!)

Clearly, Essen has taken travel writing to a new level. Call it eco-tourism and travel-logging combined with the spirit of Charles Darwin aboard the Beagle. Essen takes notes, collects specimens (but lets them go after the photo op), and turns his notes into a narrative. He's a modest but accomplished kind of writer, combining light humor with some right sharp barbs at ungreen types in the White House and elsewhere. He trades "No Newt is Good Newt" T-shirts in the Amazon for spears and dugout paddles while doing something I wish more Americans aboard would do--that is, show that Americans care about the planet and its people, its cultures and its wild life and not just about exploiting its resources.

Okay, now I must confess some of the jokes really were funny, although I think I'm glad I didn't have to hear the improvised lyrics to some popular songs that Essen dreamed up--e.g., to Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" after getting covered with penguin poo in the Antarctic:

"I am Guano Man!
"Na, na, na, na, naaa
"Na, na, naaa, naaa!" (p. 218).

Here are a couple more examples of Marty's humor: He and Deb are canoeing down the Zambezi River in the heart of Zimbabwe, when a hippo rises out of the water and chomps through their canoe, throwing them onto the river bank. This inspires Essen to title the chapter, "Hippo Canoe and Zimbabwe Too." (For those readers not intimately familiar with US history, this recalls the election slogan of President William Henry Harrison and his running mate John Tyler in 1840: "Tippy Canoe and Tyler, too.")

Then there's this from page 252: He and Deb are in Borneo hiking a muddy trail high above a river. His feet slip out from under him, but he saves himself by grabbing onto a small tree. He remarks to Deb: "Remember the movie Romancing the Stone, when Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas were caught in the jungle rainstorm? I thought for sure I was going to reenact their mudslide scene--minus the face-first landing between Kathleen Turner's legs, of course."

Bottom line: an adventure of a read, replete with vivid detail about not only the plants and animals, but about the people and politics of the countries visited told openly and even innocently by a man whose love for the planet and its creatures is obvious and infectious.

--Dennis Littrell, author of the mystery novel, “Teddy and Teri”

[Kyri Freeman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marty Essen and his wife travelled the world seeking and photographing wildlife, especially snakes and amphibians, and this book records their adventures.

At first I was taken aback by the flippant tone of this book, because I'm used to reading nature writers like Matthiessen and Heinrich and Schaller, who take a very different approach. After a while, though, the joke-laced, up-to-the-minute, Comedy Central sort of tone became engaging. I think the book would do well for young and reluctant readers, but it also has interest for nature and travel enthusiasts in general. Occasional philosophical and political comments were contextually appropriate and perhaps were strengthened by contrast with the overall light tone.

I would have liked to see many more of the photographs that were taken.

[Janel]

Lots of ripping scenarios.

[Marty Essen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m the author of “Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents,” so I’m writing this more to give you some information rather than to provide a review. Who would believe an author reviewing his own book anyway?

Cool Creatures, Hot Planet has been a magical experience for me. Not only did it win six national awards, but I turned it into a live stage show, called “Around the World in 90 Minutes.” I have been performing that show at colleges practically since the book was published in 2007.

In fact, that’s one of the reasons it’s taken me so long to write my second book, “Endangered Edens: Exploring the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Costa Rica, the Everglades, and Puerto Rico” (which will be published on January 8, 2016). I’ve been too busy performing at colleges.

The reason I write this today is because I have a hunch that when Endangered Edens comes out, many readers will also be discovering Cool Creatures, Hot Planet as a result. It will be so much fun to have an entire new crop of readers!

Over the years Cool Creatures, Hot Planet has received great reviews—both from readers and professional book critics. Of course, not everyone loved everything. I read all reviews, and two things some readers complained about were that the book didn’t have enough pictures, and that I spent too much time ripping President George W. Bush.

Regarding the pictures: The book does include 86 color photos. I wish I could have included more, but photo-intensive books are expensive to produce, and that was the maximum number of photos the publishing company could include and still keep the book competitively priced. Fortunately, you can see many more photos from the adventures on my website, www.MartyEssen.com. I also advise getting the latest Second Edition book, sold directly by Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other major booksellers. There was a brief time, between distributors, when the book was available only with black and white photos. If you buy used, you may end up with the black and white version.

Regarding George W. Bush: Please understand that one of the unique things about Cool Creatures, Hot Planet is that all seven continents of adventures take place just before or during the Iraq War. As a writer, I would have been irresponsible not to include comments from people I met around the world—many who were critical of George W. Bush. Even so, less than 5% of Cool Creatures, Hot Planet deals with President Bush and the war.

Some readers feel that including politics breaks the rules for this genre of book. Believe me, that wasn’t the only travel writing rule I broke. Personally, I think some rules are good to break once in a while. Who wants to read book after book that follows the same rigid format?

Nevertheless, if you are a George W. Bush fan, or are offended by liberal politics, I ask that you not buy this book. I’d much rather lose a sale than to have you purchase it and not enjoy it (or leave a one or a two star rating without comment).

For everyone else: I hope you’ll check out both Cool Creatures, Hot Planet and Endangered Edens. I’m a humorist writer at heart, so I promise plenty of laughs to go along with the memorable people and animal encounters on all seven continents. I also look forward to reading your reviews on Goodreads!


Marty Essen, author of Endangered Edens: Exploring the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Costa Rica, the Everglades, and Puerto Rico

and

Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents

[Mary Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was enjoying reading about the adventures while looking for wildlife and flora and seeing different places, but when the politics came in, it became bogged down.

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's was a great book but not gonna lie, I had to skip and skim some some pages to make it all the way through. Very entertaining and informative. This is so good that it's hard to believe that it's non-fiction.

[Inge Borg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Courageous exploration of our world.

A delightful, extremely well-written and laid-out romp through the continents. It is evident that the author loves and respects all creatures with maybe two exceptions: His house cat and Mildred - the traveler from hell. Maybe three, if you count George W. Busch.

I expected slithery, slimy, crawly things-and got them-but in a way that was not only educational but fun and actually page-turning. Marty Essen not only looked for venomous snakes (his passion) but imagined himself (in Never-Cry-Wolf-fashion) running with the caribou way up north in the Klondike.

To boot, his intrepid, water-loving wife was game for anything. Though I had some doubt when I read that "she ran into the cold river, wallowed in the mud until her backside was all black." Oh, wait! I must have been distracted. Kate was the dog! There are some tender moments with Annie (also a dog), as well as Deb (that's the wife).

A wonderful reading experience. Don't let the high page-count scare you off. Traipsing through the thicket of seven continents does take time, and patience, and love for our planet; as well as courage.

[Tom Schulte · Rating 3 out of 5]

this was a fun and educational read following Essen and his wife around the seven continents (yes, Antarctica, too) seeking wild and dangerous animals. many of these animals are endangered and Essen reminds us of what we may be losing. grappling with these issues as well as snakes and arachnids themselves, Essen charges into mud and bullet ants with childlike glee. the book has an initial photo section, but this feels way too few of those taken. it's especially disappointing to read a paragraph all about the travails of obtaining a shot and not to have that shot right there on the page

[Melissa Arkin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a great book! Let me start with I really don't like animals or nature. Well, that's a big part of this book. He made me excited when he'd see an animal or whatever. He's always hilarious and a great member of society

[Montanaman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love animals.
This book is very cool.