A long-awaited book by Maryland’s only Republican governor in a generation is scheduled to arrive in stores just in time for Christmas shopping.
“Turn This Car Around: The Roadmap to Restoring America,” by Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr., will appear on shelves Dec. 6, its author said in an interview Monday.
Ehrlich, who lost a comeback bid last year to Gov. Martin O’Malley (D), said the book signals his desire “to be relevant in the national debate.” He said he continues to have no inclination to run for elected office again.
BenBella Books, a boutique publisher, describes Ehrlich’s work on its Web site as “a call to action, and a blunt collection of dispatches from America’s culture wars, retold by a former state legislator, congressman, and governor who fought on the front lines. Bob Ehrlich recounts the contentious battles he waged in the widely recognized liberal state of Maryland, and provides insightful suggestions to help resolve many of the issues in America.”
Ehrlich said the book is not a memoir of his time in office but draws on several of his experiences. Among the “front-burner issues” he said he covers are the shortcomings of urban education, the debate over multiculturalism, race relations and the role of public-sector unions.
Ehrlich said he started working on the book in 2008, the year after he left the governor’s office, largely in late-night writing sessions after his kids went to bed.
It was “put on ice” during the 2010 campaign against O’Malley, he said, ”because it was the last thing I needed to worry about at the time.”
Ehrlich, who is now working as a lawyer at King & Spalding in the District, said he has since freshened the book.
At least two events are in the works in conjunction with its publication: a fundraiser hosted by the Maryland Republican Party and a signing in New York hosted by former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, an Ehrlich friend who wrote the book’s forward.
Ehrlich said a book tour is being arranged and he expects to do a good deal of national radio and television in December to promote the book.
“We’ll definitely get around the country some,” he said.
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