Audiobooks by Tommy Tomlinson

Dogland: Passion, Glory, and Lots of Slobber at the Westminster Dog Show

"Delightful." —Town & Country • "Extraordinary...Tomlinson's book is a gem." —Star Tribune (Minneapolis) • "Moving...Really broke me." —The Washington Post • "This book wants to lick your face. Let it." —Kirkus Reviews Pulitzer Prize finalist Tommy Tomlinson explores the bond between dogs and their people in this irresistibly appealing, inside account of the Westminster Dog Show that follows one dog on his quest to become a champion. Tommy Tomlinson was watching a dog show on television a few years ago when he had a sudden thought: Are those dogs happy? How about pet dogs—are they happy? Those questions sparked a quest to venture inside the dog-show world, in search of a deeper understanding of the longtime relationship between dogs and humans, and here, in Dogland he shares his surprising, entertaining, and moving adventures. Spending three years on the road, Tomlinson goes behind the scenes at more than one hundred competitions across the country, from Midwestern fairgrounds to Madison Square Garden. Along the way he is licked, sniffed, and rubbed up against by dogs of nearly every size, shape, and breed. Like a real-life version of the classic mockumentary Best in Show, Dogland follows one champion show dog—a Samoyed named Striker—as well as his handler, Laura King, and his devoted entourage of breeders and owners as he competes in the 2022 Westminster Dog Show. Striker's whole career has been leading up to this moment. As Tomlinson writes, picking a top show dog is like drafting an NFL quarterback when they're still in elementary school. Now Striker has made it to the Super Bowl. Tomlinson takes us on the long road to glory, bringing the dog-show circuit to life as teams scramble from town to town in search of championship ribbons. (Striker and his crew travel in a custom-built RV named after Betty White.) Tomlinson's limitless curiosity about people and dogs reaches far beyond the show tents and into the ordinary lives of dogs. We hear from experts who have discovered new insights into how dogs and humans formed their bond—and how that bond has changed over the centuries. We discover the fascinating origins of different dog breeds, learn about the elaborate breed standards that determine an ideal show dog, and consider the health issues that can arise in purebred dogs. We also meet dog lovers who applaud every dog, regardless of breed, simply for being themselves, such as WeRateDogs, the social media phenomenon with millions of followers, all for posts celebrating the day-to-day goofiness in most dog owners' lives. "A big ol' slobbering smooch of optimism, laughter, and happiness" (Joe Posnanski) Dogland takes us on a rollicking tour through the rituals, tricks, and wonders of the dog-show world—and reveals what matters most for the happiness of dogs and dog lovers everywhere.

Tommy Tomlinson (Author), Jonathan Davis (Narrator)

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The Elephant in the Room: One Fat Man's Quest to Get Smaller in a Growing America

"Inspirational…I loved this book. I found myself sneak-reading it from the moment it came in the door. As with a sack of White Castle burgers, I hated to reach the end….[Tomlinson] writes exceedingly well." —Dwight Garner, The New York Times The government definition of obesity is a body mass index of 30 or more. My BMI is 60.7. My shirts are size XXXXXXL, which the big-and-tall stores shorten to 6X. I'm 6-foot-1, or 73 inches tall. My waist is 60 inches around. I'm nearly a sphere. Those are the numbers. This is how it feels… So begins The Elephant in the Room, Tommy Tomlinson's remarkably intimate and insightful memoir of his life as a fat man. When he was almost fifty years old, Tomlinson weighed an astonishing—and dangerous—460 pounds, at risk for heart disease, diabetes, and stroke, unable to climb a flight of stairs without having to catch his breath, or travel on an airplane without buying two seats. Raised in a family that loved food, he had been aware of the problem for years, seeing doctors and trying diets from the time he was a preteen. But nothing worked, and every time he tried to make a change, it didn't go the way he planned—in fact, he wasn't sure that he really wanted to change. In The Elephant in the Room, Tomlinson chronicles his lifelong battle with weight in a voice that combines the urgency of Roxane Gay's Hunger with the intimacy of Rick Bragg's All Over but the Shoutin'. He also hits the road to meet other members of the plus-sized tribe in an attempt to understand how, as a nation, we got to this point. From buying a FitBit and setting exercise goals to contemplating the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas, America's "capital of food porn," and modifying his own diet, Tomlinson brings us along on a candid and sometimes brutal look at the everyday experience of being constantly aware of your size. Over the course of the book, he confronts these issues head-on and chronicles the practical steps he has to take—big and small—to lose weight by the end. Affecting and searingly honest, The Elephant in the Room is a powerful memoir that will resonate with anyone who has grappled with addiction, shame, or self-consciousness. It is also a literary triumph that will stay with readers long after the last page.

Tommy Tomlinson (Author), Tommy Tomlinson (Narrator)

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Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition

What happens when you eat an apple? The answer is vastly more complex than you imagine. Every apple contains thousands of antioxidants whose names, beyond a few like vitamin C, are unfamiliar to us, and each of these powerful chemicals has the potential to play an important role in supporting our health. They impact thousands upon thousands of metabolic reactions inside the human body. But calculating the specific influence of each of these chemicals isn't nearly sufficient to explain the effect of the apple as a whole. Because almost every chemical can affect every other chemical, there is an almost infinite number of possible biological consequences-and that's just from an apple. Nutritional science, long stuck in a reductionist mindset, is at the cusp of a revolution. The traditional gold standard of nutrition research has been to study one chemical at a time in an attempt to determine its particular impact on the human body. These sorts of studies are helpful to food companies trying to prove there is a chemical in milk or prepackaged dinners that is "good" for us, but they provide little insight into the complexity of what actually happens in our bodies or how those chemicals contribute to our health. In The China Study, T. Colin Campbell revolutionized the way we think about our food with the evidence that a whole food, plant-based diet is the healthiest way to eat. Now, in Whole, he explains the science behind that evidence, the ways our current scientific paradigm ignores the fascinating complexity of the human body, and why, if we have such overwhelming evidence that everything we think we know about nutrition is wrong, our eating habits haven't changed. Whole is an eye-opening, paradigm-changing journey through cutting-edge thinking on nutrition, a scientific tour de force with powerful implications for our health and for our world. "Whole makes a convincing case that modern nutrition's focus on single nutrients has led to mass confusion with tragic health consequences. Dr. Campbell's new paradigm will change the way we think about food and, in doing so, could improve the lives of millions of people and save billions of dollars in health care costs."-Brian Wendel, creator and executive producer of Forks over Knives

Howard Jacobson, T. Colin Campbell, Tommy Tomlinson (Author), Don Hagen (Narrator)

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