At 7 p.m. tonight (Wednesday) in the Central Methodist University Little Theatre, award-winning author Marty Essen will present his high-energy multi-media show, Around the World in 90 Minutes, at Central Methodist University. 

Marty’s show features interesting facts, humorous stories, and the best of thousands of photos he took while traveling the world for his first book, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents. It’s the type of show where the audience has fun laughing at the stories, oohing and aahing at the photos, and then, when it's all done, they realize just how much they've learned. 

Around the World in 90 Minutes began as a show Marty presented in bookstores as part of his first book tour. Later, after numerous refinements, the show took on a life of its own in colleges, museums, and nature centers across the United States. In fact, Marty Essen has been APCA’s (a major college activities association) #1 booked college speaker for a total of 50 months. 

 Highlights of Marty’s show include amazing animal facts, debunking animal myths, cuddly wallaroos and spiny walking sticks, charging elephants and howling wolves, deadly snakes and friendly penguins, bizarre creatures and endangered species, swimming with piranhas, kayaking in the rainforest, hiking with the porcupine caribou migration, rating with humpback whales, and surviving a hippo attack in Zimbabwe. 

Marty Essen is an Amazon #1 Best-Selling Author, who has won multiple book awards for travel/essay writing, including the Benjamin Franklin Award, the Best Books Book Award, and the National Indie Excellence Award. In addition, he won a first place award at 2009 Green Book Festival in Los Angeles, and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune named Cool Creatures, Hot Planet a Top-10 “Green” book.