Bob Welch – författare

If George and Mary Bailey are annual guests at your home every winter, you already know that It''s a Wonderful Life is more than just a holiday tradition--it''s a powerful reminder that our lives can change everyone around us, for better or worse. But what can this Christmas classic teach us about our everyday lives?

52 Little Lessons from It''s a Wonderful Life will change the way you think about this holiday staple, from the lightheartedness of George and Mary''s floor-parting dance to the poignancy of a community that rallies to save a desperate man, Bob Welch''s 52 Little Lessons from It''s a Wonderful Life will inspire you to live for the things that matter most.

Welch invites us to revisit the defining lessons in Frank Capra''s 1946 classic and discover new dimensions of the film you''ve seen time and again, including:

Join Welch for a close-up of the characters and themes that shape this timeless story of resilience and redemption. You''ll be reminded that life''s most important work is often the work we never planned to do, that God can use the most unlikely among us to get the job done, and that grace is the greatest gift we can possibly give.

Discover why It''s a Wonderful Life is more than just a holiday tradition--it''s an inspiration for us to lead better lives, to become people of honor and integrity, and to recognize what really matters.

Gold Medallion Award-winner Bob Welch crafts 52 nuggets of Bible-based wisdom from one of the most popular novels, musicals, and films of all time: Les Misérables.

In 52 Little Lessons from Les Misérables, Bob Welch walks readers through Hugo’s masterpiece, extracting dozens of uniquely spiritual reflections from this enduring portrait of poverty, social injustice, mercy, and redemption. Welch reminds us that Jean Valjean’s life provides the truest example of why real love is found in the grittiest places, and that hearts are made whole beneath the crush of mercy. Most important, though, Welch keeps returning to the intersections of faith and reality throughout Hugo’s writing—those places where mercy becomes an inroad to the heart, and where love is only truly received when it is given without condition.

Discover again why life’s purpose is found not in attending to personal needs and desires, but in responding to the hearts of others.

How do we learn life lessons from a grumpy penny-pincher so unpleasant that dogs run from him on sight? Does Scripture suggest we all have a touch of Scrooge in us? Can we all benefit from reexamining who we''ve become in our own life stories? Bestselling author Bob Welch invites us to discover these questions and more in 52 Little Lessons from A Christmas Carol.

Join Welch as he takes you deeper into the nuances of this timeless story by Charles Dickens. From the stinginess of Scrooge to the innocence of Tiny Tim, the biblically based devotions in 52 Little Lessons from A Christmas Carol will inspire you to live for what really matters--not only at Christmas, but all year long.

52 Little Lessons from A Christmas Carol will help you get to know this holiday classic--and yourself--better. This devotional, much like the original novel, is tinted with a fair share of how-not-to-live lessons as well as how-to-live lessons, helping us see that we can learn from both, just like we do in scripture.

As you enjoy A Christmas Carol in this brand new light, you''ll learn that:

In 52 Little Lessons from A Christmas Carol, discover why A Christmas Carol is more than just a holiday tradition--it''s an exploration of charity, grief, and making the most of the lives that we''re given.

Elite paratrooper Sgt. Don Malarkey takes us not only into the World War II battles fought from Normandy to Germany, but into the heart and mind of a soldier who lost his best friend during the nightmarish engagement at Bastogne. Drafted in 1942, Malarkey arrived at Camp Toccoa in Georgia and was one of the one in six soldiers who earned their Eagle wings. He went to England in 1943 to provide cover on the ground for the largest amphibious military attack in history: Operation Overlord. In the darkness of D-day morning, Malarkey parachuted into France and within days was awarded a Bronze Star for his heroism in battle. He fought for twenty-three days in Normandy, nearly eighty in Holland, thirty-nine in Bastogne, and nearly thirty more in and near Haugenau, France, and the Ruhr pocket in Germany. Easy Company Soldier is his dramatic tale of those bloody days fighting his way from the shores of France to the heartland of Germany, and the epic story of how an adventurous kid from Oregon became a leader of men.

Elite paratrooper Sgt. Don Malarkey takes us not only into the World War II battles fought from Normandy to Germany, but into the heart and mind of a soldier who lost his best friend during the nightmarish engagement at Bastogne.Drafted in 1942, Malarkey arrived at Camp Toccoa in Georgia and was one of the one in six soldiers who earned their Eagle wings. He went to England in 1943 to provide cover on the ground for the largest amphibious military attack in history: Operation Overlord. In the darkness of D-day morning, Malarkey parachuted into France and within days was awarded a Bronze Star for his heroism in battle. He fought for twenty-three days in Normandy, nearly eighty in Holland, thirty-nine in Bastogne, and nearly thirty more in and near Haugenau, France, and the Ruhr pocket in Germany.Easy Company Soldier is his dramatic tale of those bloody days fighting his way from the shores of France to the heartland of Germany, and the epic story of how an adventurous kid from Oregon became a leader of men.

Saving My Enemy is a Band of Brothers sequel like no other.

Guilt nearly killed one of the celebrated Band of Brothers members, Sgt. Don Malarkey. He was a hero for his service in World War II, especially in the Battle of the Bulge, yet he came to the brink of suicide, haunted by the memories of the German soldiers he killed.

Across the ocean, Fritz Engelbert was shackled in shame for having been a pawn of Hitler—he too had fought in the Battle of the Bulge—but for the Germans. He could not find peace.

Saving My Enemy is the touching true story of two soldiers on opposite sides of WWII whose unlikely friendship, forged in their eighties, dissolves six decades of guilt and shame that had pushed both men to despair.

“I contend that every vet crying over his beer in some American Legion hall about something that happened seventy years ago is doing so not because of lost buddies, but because of lost honor, of shame. Long after World War II was over, Don helped restore that honor in Fritz. And Fritz did the same for Don. I was gripped by this story.”

—Jeff Struecker, a former US Army Ranger who heard this story directly from the men’s families

Malarkey and Engelbert had completely different backgrounds, but their stories collided amid the largest and bloodiest single battle fought by the USA in WWII—the Battle of the Bulge. Beneath blankets of snow, the earth was hardened like iron. With temperatures dipping below zero degrees Fahrenheit, the conditions were as brutal as any in the history of warfare. This was Germany’s last hope to stop the Allies and they were desperate for victory.

Fritz, nineteen, a private in the Panzer-Lerh-Division, had the chief duty of being a krad messenger (on a military motorcycle). Don, twenty-three, is a sergeant in E Company, 506th Regiment, and is living in a foxhole in the woods overlooking villages below where Fritz and other German soldiers are awaiting the fight. Both men took quiet moments of introspection. Fritz remembered a dead American soldier he saw alongside the road and he “thought of his parents who would miss him dearly” and felt a certain “brotherhood with the enemy.” Two weeks later, as Easy Company pushed Germany back, Don had a similar experience—he had just shot and killed a German soldier and was shocked to find he was only sixteen. “I looked at his face, eyes fixed forever. A face that I wouldn’t forget. Not the next day. Not the next month. Not ever.”

Welch gives intimate glimpses into these men’s souls as they fought each other during the war, lived in despair and guilt in the decades that followed, and finally found forgiveness and peace through each other. Don and Fritz’s story is one of hope and inspiration that will not be forgotten.

In 1968, perhaps the finest US Olympic men’s track-and-field team ever stirred the world in unprecedented ways, among them the victory stand black rights protest by Tommie Smith and John Carlos in Mexico City. But in competition no single athlete mirrored the free-thinking 1960s better than Dick Fosbury, a failed prep high jumper who invented an offbeat style that ultimately won him a gold medal and revolutionized the event. No jumpers today use any other style than his.

Yet few know the struggles Fosbury endured to achieve his success, as he and Bob Welch recount in The Wizard of Foz. From the tragic death of a younger brother to nearly dying himself, from flunking out of college to nearly being drafted, Fosbury cleared far more obstacles than a high-jump bar. And even when he had seemingly made the US Olympic Team, he faced a “redo” that nobody saw coming.

This book tells a story of loss, survival, and triumph, twined in a person (Fosbury), a time (the 1960s), and a place (a fantasy-like Olympic Trials venue high in the Sierra Nevada) clearly made for each other. It is a story of a young man who refused to listen to those who laughed at him, those who doubted him, and those who tried to make him someone he was not.