After the Flood: Sowing Charity From Tragedy - Robert Rogers on ABCnews.com
Friday, August 29 – 8:50 a.m. ET
ABCnews.com today featured a cover story about Tyndale author Robert Rogers, who lost his entire family in a flood in Kansas five years ago this week. His book, Into the Deep, tells his remarkable story.
Five years ago this week, Robert and his family got caught in a flash flood driving home from a wedding in Wichita, Kansas. Their minivan was swept off the highway and tragically, Robert lost the five most precious people in his life, making him the sole survivor in his family. Despite this tragedy, he learned to lean on friends and God to help him through the most difficult of times.
The Winners Manual: For the Game of Life, the new book by Ohio State head football coach with Chris Fabry, will be No. 14 on the New York Times’ expanded Advice, How-To and Miscellaneous list on Sunday, September 7. It marks its sixth consecutive week on either the Time’s primary or expanded list.
Ohio State opens the season this Saturday vs. Youngstown State in Columbus. Of course, Youngstown State is the school where Jim Tressel won four Division I-AA national championships. While Coach Tressel did his book signing in Youngstown in July, a number of YSU football players actually showed up to the signing in uniform. While they didn’t ask for autographs, it was somewhat strange seeing YSU players at the book signing of the coach whom they will facing in week one.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008 – 8:45 a.m. Billy: The Early Years is an upcoming movie based on the life of Billy Graham. Billy Graham’s son, Franklin, does not endorse the movie.
“The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association has not collaborated with nor does it endorse the movie, 'Billy: The Early Years,'” expressed Franklin Graham in a written response as the organization’s CEO last week. “While the movie covers many aspects of my father’s early years, it depicts events that never happened or are greatly embellished,” he added. http://christianpost.com/article/20080826/franklin-graham-among-billy-movie-critics.htm
According to the Japanese Times, in an annual survey, 52 percent of 1,812 adult respondents in Japan said last October they did not read a book in the previous month, 14 points above the figure 20 years earlier. Hundreds of small and midsize bookstores have closed in recent years. http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20080826i1.html
The Tyndale publicity team (Mavis Sanders, Maggie Rowe, Vicky Lynch, Katie Anderson, Christy Wong, Todd Starowitz) had lunch today with Marcia Nelson, the new Publishers Weekly Religion Reviews Editor. We ate at The Bank Restaurant on Front Street in Wheaton. Our lunch today allowed us to discuss with Marcia, who lives in nearby Aurora, Ill., Tyndale’s key forthcoming titles. It also afforded us the opportunity to learn a little bit more about how Marcia selects the books that she wishes to review. Marcia’s web site, with a link to her blog, is at http://www.marciaznelson.com/bio.htm
www.faithfulreader.com has study guides for recent Tyndale titles Dogwood, by Chris Fabry, and Unchristian America, by Michael Babcock.
Tyndale author Joel Rosenberg was a guest on Glenn Beck’s radio and television shows yesterday to discuss the Russia/Georgia conflict and did a great job as he always does. Rosenberg’s book Epicenter 2.0 is No. 100 on Amazon.com’s hourly rankings as I write. The link to the radio interview is http://www.glennbeck.com/content/show/2008-08-25/
Tyndale author Joel Rosenberg will be on the Glenn Beck radio show today at 11:00 a.m. ET to discuss Epicenter 2.0, along with Putin and the crisis in Georgia. He will also be on Glenn’s tv show tonight as well.
Linked below is a Cleveland Plain-Dealer article about Ohio State football players wearing a gray arm band inscribed with “Thank You God, I am Grateful.” While it references Tyndale author and OSU head football coach Jim Tressel and his book The Winners Manual, the credit for the arm band goes to OSU fullback Brandon Smith.
Next is a Raleigh News & Observer article about Krispy Krème CEO Jim Morgan and his daily Bible devotionals. It includes a mention and prominent placement of Tony Dungy’s Quiet Strength.
I am posting the article below because Relevant Magazine is well known in Christian publishing circles, and one that we pitch products to quite often. It’s also interesting that according to the article, Cameron Strang, editor of Relevant, changed his party affiliation from Republican to independent just this week. If you wish to read more about the growth of independents within evangelical circles, you may wish to read “We the Purple: Faith, Politics, and the Independent Voter” by Marcia Ford.
"I am every partisan politician's worst nightmare--a registered independent," says journalist Marcia Ford. "Wildly unpredictable in my voting habits over the last three decades, I have cast ballots for Democrats, Republicans, independents and assorted loose cannons."
Young evangelical backs out of convention prayer By ERIC GORSKI – 5 hours ago
DENVER (AP) — It was a coup for Democrats: An emerging young evangelical voice, a registered Republican no less, accepted their invitation to deliver a prayer at next week's Democratic National Convention. But Cameron Strang, the 32-year-old editor of edgy and hip Relevant Magazine, had second thoughts and pulled out of delivering the benediction on the convention's first night, Monday. Citing fears that his bridge-building gesture would be wrongly construed as an endorsement, Strang said he instead hopes to take a lower-profile role, participating in a convention caucus meeting on religion later in the week. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hoQpOjTqHU0HXKqy23RdnjkNDsbQD92N7LJO0
US Olympian reads Quiet Strength on flight to China
Thursday, August 21, 2008 – 9:45 a.m. ET
Linked below is an article about US Olympian and 200-meter bronze medalist Walter Dix and why his coach, Bob Braman, gave him a copy of Tony Dungy’s Quiet Strength to read on Dix’s flight to China.
Linked is an interesting story from Publishers Weekly about Barnes & Noble cancelling a 10,000-copy order of Obama’s Challenge, because the publisher, Chelsea Green, is making it available early exclusively through Amazon.com.
Author of Unchristian America, Michael Babcock, on radio tomorrow
Monday, August 18, 2008 – 2:00 p.m. CT
Tomorrow will be a busy day for Tyndale author Michael Babcock, a professor of humanities at Liberty University. The author of a new book, UnChristian America: Living with faith in a nation that was never under God, Babcock will do four radio interviews (listed below) with stations in Philadelphia, Detroit, Tampa, and on the Family Life Network, which has affiliates in New York and Pennsylvania.
A portion of the back cover copy of UnChristian America is as follows:
For decades, a cultural battle has raged between those who fear that America is losing its Christian heritage and those who are disturbed by what they see as a dangerous attempt by conservative Christians to grab political power and force their beliefs on the entire nation.
The issues are great and small—should Intelligent Design be taught alongside evolutionary theory in our classrooms? Can Christian organizations be compelled to employ someone who is openly gay? Are decency standards no longer enforceable in an age of digital communication? But in the end, they all come back to the question of our national identity. Are we a Christian nation that has lost its way or a place where the “faith of our fathers” is complete irrelevant?
As an evangelical Christian and a professor at the university founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, Michael Babcock is writing from within the culture of the Christian Right. Yet in UnChristian America, he offers an unexpected and thought-provoking proposition: We can’t reclaim our Christian heritage because America was never a Christian nation in the first place.
Grounded in compelling historical evidence, UnChristian America traces the moral and cultural decline of our nation from Jamestown to present day, and challenges us to rethink our assumptions about what it means to fight for our faith.
Tuesday, Aug. 19 @ 10:10 AM ET WFIL-AM 560 (Philadelphia, PA) 20 minutes The Mark Daniels Show
Tuesday, Aug. 19 @ 10:30 AM ET Family Life Network 20-25 minutes Afternoon Show with Cecil VanHouten
Tuesday, Aug. 19 @ 2:35 PM ET WMUZ-FM 103.5 (Detroit, MI) 30 minutes The Bob Dutko Show
Tuesday, Aug. 19 @ 4:30 PM ET Salem Radio WTBN AM 570 & AM 910 (Tampa, FL) 24 minutes Drive Time with Bill Bunkley
Tyndale author David Aikman (The Delusion of Disbelief: Why the New Atheism Is a Threat to Your Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness) was a guest on David Wheaton’s radio show, The Christian Worldview, this past weekend to discuss the Russia/Georgia conflict and how it affects Americans and Christians. David Wheaton is an author, speaker, radio talk show host, and former professional tennis player. He reached the semifinals of Wimbledon in 1991.
BEIJING, China (CNN) -- Four members of a Christian group from the United States are refusing to leave an airport in China after authorities confiscated their 300 Bibles, the group's director said Monday. The four members of Vision Beyond Borders -- based in Sheridan, Wyoming -- arrived in the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming on Sunday. Customs officials discovered the Bibles during an X-ray scan of their luggage, said Pat Klein, director of the group, which supplies Bibles and other Christian material to people in China and other countries.
It is truly a beautiful day in Chicago. We’re working on nearly two weeks of temperatures in the upper 70s, or lower 80s. We’ve had ONE 90-degree day all summer, which is extremely rare. Only one time since the 1880s has Chicago not had a 90-degree day. It was in the 50s when most of us woke up this morning.
Tyndale employees are still enjoying watching the Olympics, and also anticipating the Tyndale Olympics, which begin next week. I’ll have more about this event next week.
Swimming and gymnastics took top billing in Beijing last night. I am glad that we are on Central time or these events would be well past most of our bed times. I had great interest in USA swimmer Ryan Lochte last evening. My sisters, who are twins, and I were competitive swimmers and Ryan’s mom and dad coached my sisters in upstate New York. My sister, Lori, went on to be a really good swimmer at Johns Hopkins University. I last saw Ryan in 1992 at the Olympic Trials in Indianapolis. Ryan would have been about eight-years-old and his parents were coaching a swimmer, Kim Small, who was participating in the Trials. Kim, who swam both the 400- and 800-meter freestyle events, finished third in both events, with legend Janet Evans winning both. Only the top two swimmers made the Olympic team. I can’t imagine working that hard only to finish one spot from making the Olympic team…twice. I’m sure that Kim just falling short of making the team in 1992 fueled Ryan’s competitive fire for years to come.
What I do remember most about Ryan when he was really little was that he was an absolute wild man. He’d get kicked out of practice, would try to flood the locker room at Monroe Community College by filling the drains with paper towels and turning on the showers, and liked to press the buttons of his mom and dad. I also remember that he was just an incredibly gifted athlete. He was one of those little kids that you’d see and say to yourself, “Wow, it’s going to be fun to see how good he is when he grows up.” Well, I found out last night as Ryan is an Olympic champion and world record holder in the 200-meter backstroke. He also earned a third place finish in the 200-meter individual medley, missing the silver by .01 of a second. Michael Phelps won the event, which was less than :30 minutes after Lochte finished the backstroke. I don’t know if he could have won, but I would have loved to have seen Lochte and Phelps race the 200 IM with Ryan fully rested. I think it would have been much more interesting.
On another note, Ohio State is well into football practice with Tyndale author Jim Tressel leading his charges. OSU is ranked among the top five teams in the country in every poll. Linked below is an article, “Faith and Sports”, about OSU and the importance of faith in the program.
Focus Radio Show Inducted into National Radio Hall of Fame
Tyndale has a partnership with Focus on the Family, so we celebrate with Focus as the Focus Daily Radio Show earns a place in the National Radio Hall of Fame. See the link below for details:
Jim Tressel's The Winners Manual: For the Game of Life will be No. 10 on the New York Times' "Advice, How-to, and Misc." list on Sunday, August 24. It will mark its fourth consecutive week on the list, having peaked at No. 3.
I wrote yesterday that I planned to discuss Amazon rankings today. Linked below is a primer about Amazon and Barnes & Noble book rankings and I will discuss the article later today or tomorrow. While I contend the rankings do provide an indication of how well a book may be doing, a relatively small number of sales in a short period of time may greatly influence Amazon and Barnes and Noble rankings. I’ve also included a link to a site where you may track Amazon rankings.
Linked below is an article from politico.com, “For politicos, books are hard business,” an article about the lagging book sales of many politicians. While it relies too heavily on Amazon book rankings (a topic I may discuss in tomorrow’s blog), it’s an interesting read.
What an amazing weekend of weather we had in the Chicagoland area. It did rain a little on Saturday afternoon but Sunday was absolutely gorgeous. It was about 78 degrees, there was not a cloud in the sky, and the humidity was negligible. Many people at Tyndale are enjoying watching the Olympics. I was glad to see that the opening ceremonies pulled such a huge rating as, for some reason, it seems like it has become cool for people to say that they don’t enjoy watching the Olympics. While I’m sure that’s true for some, I also contend that some of those same people (many are radio and TV sports talk show hosts) are watching the Olympics when no one else is looking.
The finish of the 4x100 meter freestyle relay Sunday night was just incredible. While Michael Phelps will be remembered long after these Games are finished, Jason Lezak, the anchor leg of the relay, is in some ways the Mike Eruzione of the 2008 Olympics. While Sunday night’s event didn’t have the historical impact of the US beating the Russians in hockey at the peak of the Cold War during the 1980 Olympics, it has to be one of the best closing finishes in Olympic history.
I had the opportunity to watch the Tony Dungy on Winning With Quiet Strength DVD, which releases in September. You may want to check it out. Colts fans will really like it because it’s narrated by Colts radio play-by-play announcer Bob Lamey. It also includes video and still pictures from Tony’s playing days in high school in Jackson, Mich., as well as clips of him playing at the University of Minnesota and with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Like the book, the DVD includes many of the principles, practices, and priorities that Coach Dungy finds so important.
We also want to send out our prayers to the former Soviet republic of Georgia. This is a huge story that because of the Olympics and the John Edwards affair scandal has in some ways gone almost completely under the radar. This is a crisis of Cold War proportions. Tyndale author Joel Rosenberg gives his take on the situation at Joel’s popular blog: http://joelrosenberg.blogspot.com/.
Joel writes, in part: "One critical issue to watch as the crisis develops: Who is really in charge in Moscow, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin or newly installed President Dmitry Medvedev? For the moment, it seems to be Putin who is calling the shots and speaking out most forcefully on the crisis with Georgia. Putin, of course, believes deeply in restoring the glory of Mother Russia. He certainly does not want to lose Russian territory and is determined to expand the Russian empire. As I have written about previously, he knows he cannot expand Russia westward because NATO is expanding eastward. Putin also knows he cannot expand Russia eastward because of China. He has claimed ownership of the North Pole, but the real opportunity for Russia is to expand southward, and that is where Putin has been focusing all of his attention in recent years. He is determined to control the Caucuses region, and South Ossetia -- though not a name or place most Westerners have ever heard of much less cared about -- is a key piece in Putin's southward strategy. Interestingly, a new poll finds that four times more Russians think Putin is the most powerful man in Moscow than Medvedev, and tensions between the two men have been growing all summer."
I will post this article without editorializing. It appeared in today’s Wall Street Journal and mentions Tyndale’s Left Behind series. The article opens: “An Internet ad launched last week by the McCain presidential campaign has attracted more than one million hits by appearing to mock Barack Obama for presenting himself as a kind of prophetic figure. The ad has also generated criticism from Democrats and religious scholars who see a hidden message linking Sen. Obama to the apocalyptic Biblical figure of the antichrist." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121816422728523227.html
Joel C. Rosenberg’s Epicenter, a documentary based on his best-selling book Epicenter: Why the Current Rumblings in the Middle East Will Change Your Future, is airing on the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) August 8 at 7:00 p.m. ET.
Epicenter has sold more than 200,000 copies in hardcover and has appeared on the best-seller lists for The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Christian Booksellers Association and Christian Retailing's Top 100 Books.
We are back at work today. We’ve been on hold the last two days because a huge storm in the Chicago area Monday night knocked out power and Tyndale’s server. Because of the great work of the IS team and John Hoffman power has been restored and we came back online late last night. The storm was incredible. It was reported that there were more than 80,000 lightning strikes in the Chicago area over a four-hour period. On average in the Chicago area it would take six months to reach a total of 80,000 lighting strikes. Fortunately, there seemed to be very few storm-related injuries in the Chicago area. That is certainly a blessing.
Here are a few quick morning news items:
Jim Tressel’s The Winners Manual will be No. 9 on the New York Times’ “Advice, How-To, Miscellaneous” list on Sunday, August 17. It will mark the third consecutive week that the book will be on the list, having peaked at No. 3.
The August 11 issue of Christian Retailing features a front page story, “Sports books hope to score,” which discusses the increase of sports-related titles in Christian publishing.
Tyndale author Kathy Peel will be featured as part of an online chat at the Washington Post online site today. Peel will be online today, Monday, August 4, at 1:00 p.m. ET to talk about balancing the tasks that being a mom entails, a topic that she discusses in-depth in “The Busy Mom’s Guide to a Happy, Organized Home.”
It’s really hard to believe that it’s August 1. Because it is, however, it is exactly one month until the release of the highly anticipated The First Escape, the first book in the six-part The Dopple Ganger Chronicles, the new illustra-novella from New York Times bestselling author G.P. Taylor. What is an illustra-novella? Simply, it is a mixture of prose, comic sequentials, and graphic illustrations. While I won’t comment on the story itself because I have yet to read it, the book itself is stunning. First, the book doesn’t have a dust jacket so the cover art is imprinted directly on the cover of the book. It’s incredibly eye-catching. I know when it arrived at Tyndale I walked it around to a number of people just to show them the remarkable appearance of the book, both its cover and the pages inside.
I’ll try to let the linked article speak more about the quality of the book. The article is titled, “Author’s book encourages dyslexic girl to write.”
