My Penguin Year - Life Among the Emperors

A "remarkable memoir" (Nature) of life with an emperor penguin colony, gorgeously illustrated with 32 pages of exclusive photography

For 337 days, award-winning wildlife cameraman Lindsay McCrae intimately followed 11,000 emperor penguins amid the singular beauty of Antarctica. This is his masterful chronicle of one penguin colony’s astonishing journey of life, death, and rebirth—and of the extraordinary human experience of living amongst them in the planet’s harshest environment.

A miracle occurs each winter in Antarctica. As temperatures plummet 60° below zero and the sea around the remote southern continent freezes, emperors—the largest of all penguins—begin marching up to 100 miles over solid ice to reach their breeding grounds. They are the only animals to breed in the depths of this, the worst winter on the planet; and in an unusual role reversal, the males incubate the eggs, fasting for over 100 days to ensure they introduce their chicks safely into their new frozen world.

My Penguin Year recounts McCrae's remarkable adventure to the end of the Earth. He observed every aspect of a breeding emperor's life, facing the inevitable sacrifices that came with living his childhood dream, and grappling with the personal obstacles that, being over 15,000km away from the comforts of home, almost proved too much. Out of that experience, he has written an unprecedented portrait of Antarctica’s most extraordinary residents.

This is more than a nature documentary in book form—it is one man’s story of sacrifice and survival at the end of the world.

A Year in Antarctica: Follow an award-winning cameraman through 337 days of solitude and breathtaking beauty in the planet’s most extreme environment. Behind the Lens of a BBC Documentary: Discover the story behind the remarkable footage of an 11,000-strong penguin colony, a project that pushed its creator to his physical and emotional limits. A Test of Fatherhood: Experience the heart-wrenching story of a father-to-be, separated by 15,000km from his pregnant wife and the birth of his first child. The World of the Emperor Penguin: Witness the astonishing life cycle of these iconic birds, from the males who fast for 100 days to the chicks born into the worst winter on Earth.