Impossible Owls Audiobook By Brian Phillips cover art

Impossible Owls

Essays

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for $0.00
Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 3 months. Cancel anytime.

Impossible Owls

By: Brian Phillips
Narrated by: Steve Menasche
Try for $0.00

$0.00/mo. after 3 months. Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $21.49

Buy for $21.49

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use, License, and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

In his highly anticipated debut essay collection, Impossible Owls, Brian Phillips demonstrates why he's one of the most iconoclastic journalists of the digital age, beloved for his ambitious, off-kilter, meticulously reported essays.

The eight essays assembled here - five from Phillips' Grantland and MTV days, and three new pieces - go beyond simply chronicling some of the modern world's most uncanny, unbelievable, and spectacular oddities (though they do that, too). Researched for months and even years on end, they explore the interconnectedness of the globalized world, the consequences of history, the power of myth, and the ways people attempt to find meaning. Through each adventure, Phillips' remarkable voice becomes a character itself - full of verve, rich with offhanded humor, and revealing unexpected vulnerability.

Dogged, self-aware, and radiating a contagious enthusiasm for his subjects, Phillips is an exhilarating guide to the confusion and wonder of the world today.

©2018 Brian Phillips (P)2018 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books Essays Social Sciences Travel Writing & Commentary United States World Literature Nonfiction Witty
All stars
Most relevant  
More of a self-absorbed memoir than a series of essays. The Iditarod and the Oklahoma oil story provided some factual content and were more interesting. Writing flowed but did not interest. Do not recommend. Author had potential for better essays.

Not essays.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Every story flows like fiction, so well written that the facts of each just seem to seep into your brain while you’re completely immersed in what feels like the best novel you’ve ever read. Until you get to the next piece, which always seems better than the last. Whether you’re traveling with the author on his adventures through the jungle, or flying with him along the Iditarod, you’ll feel like he actually took you along on the journey, not like you’re reading his account of the event.

This is one of those rare books where the ENTIRE way through I was torn between devouring it as fast as I could and slowing myself down so that I could savor reading what has turned out to be my favorite book this year.

Best Book of 2018

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Some of the stories try a bit hard to 'connect' owls, and some of the sentences could be shorter ;), but overall very well written and a joy to listen to! Mr. Menasche does a really good job of keeping you engaged--in fact he sells the story so well that I think I liked the writing better than I did.

Could not stop listening...

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.