Episode 67: Ben Montgomery

Published: Nov. 12, 2018, 2:42 p.m.

Ben Montgomery is the author of \u201cThe Man Who Walked Backward: An American Dreamer\u2019s Search For Meaning in the Great Depression.\u201d The book was published by Little, Brown Spark in September, and tells the story of a man named Plennie Wingo, who in 1931, attempted to walk around the world, backward.\n\nThis is the third time Montgomery has been on the podcast. He was the guest on Episode 21, when he talked about his first book, \u201cGrandma Gatewood\u2019s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail.\u201d That book went on to become a New York Times Bestseller.\n\nHe was also one of five guests on Episode 45, which was focused on the work of the late Michael Brick, which was contained in the book, \u201cEveryone Leaves Behind a Name.\u201d The other guests on that show were Wright Thompson, Michael Kruse, Tony Rehagen, and Thomas Lake. \n\nMontgomery created the website gangrey.com, which was the namesake for this podcast. For years, he was one of the top enterprise reporters at the Tampa Bay Times, where he wrote about everything from the last spectacle lynching in Florida to why cops shoot at suspects. \n\nHe left the Tampa Bay Times in October 2017 to focus on writing \u201cThe Man Who Walked Backward.\u201d Now, he finds himself teaching student journalists at the University of Montana as the T. Anthony Pollner Distinguished Visiting Professor. \n\nMontgomery\u2019s latest book is his third. His second book was titled The Leper Spy: The Story of an Unlikely Hero of World War II. \n\n\nHe was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Local Reporting in 2010 for his series of stories on the decades of abuse at a Florida reform school for boys. He won the Dart Award and Casey Medal for the same series.