New Site

Please visit the new website for The Redskins Chronicle:

http://RedskinsChronicle.com

The book will be coming out soon, so go take a look!

The Redskins Chronicle

In 2002, I published The Redskins From A to Z, which had accounts of each game that the Washington Redskins played from when they moved to Washington in 1937 through the end of the 2001 season. The book was well received by members of the media, who used it as a reference tool, and by the fans, who viewed it as the ultimate argument settler.

It you're not familiar with the book, you can view a few chapters here to get an idea of what it's about.

The book, published by my own publishing company Game by Game Sports Media, has done remarkably well over the years. Now, however, when I talk to people about it, the question I get is not "how long did it take you to do this", or "how did you do the research", it's "when are you going to update it?"

The answer to that is question is now but, as they say in the infomercials on TV, wait, there's more. In looking at the book and in talking to others about it, I realized that The Redskins From A to Z wasn't quite the complete history of the team I was billing it to be. In doing a thorough examination of that approach, I saw that the game-by-game concept was a good start, but that that there were gaps that needed to be filled. What significant and interesting events happened during the weeks in between games? What was the reaction to this great play or that monumental blunder? What happened in between seasons?

So, I came up with the idea to create The Redskins Chronicle. The game accounts will stay much as they are, although they will receive some editing and will be extended through the 2008 season. In between games and in between seasons--and this is the "wait, there's more" part--I will add a chronology of events, a scrapbook of what happened in between games in order to give you, the reader, a better picture of the history of the team.

It's kind of hard to picture this, I know because there's nothing else like this out there. It's a different concept and you have to see it to really grasp it. I'll have some samples up here soon so that you can get an idea of the book is like.

The book will be out sometime this summer, hopefully more like June than August. I've set up this website for it. Leading up to the publication of the book, I'll publish excerpts from time to time and keep you updated on the progress of the project. You can subscribe to this site by RSS or by email in the column on the right.

If you want to be notified when the book is published and be eligible to take advantage of pre-publication specials when the book comes out, just shoot an email to rich.tandler+book@gmail.com. I'll put you on the list.

The Redskins Chronicle excerpt--1971

The Redskins Chronicle excerpt--1971

Here is the first of several excerpts from The Redskins Chronicle that I'll be posting here over the coming months. While I don't want to give away the book, this one is so different from anything else out there that I need to make sure that potential buyers get a good taste of it.

You'll see the exclusive aspects of this book. No other book about the Redskins has the story of every game that they played from when they moved to Washington to the present. In addition, the scrapbook entries tell the off-field story of the team in a unique way.

This excerpt is the 1971 season, George Allen's first as the Skins' head coach. They started and finished strong but a midseason slump left them as the Wild Card, and they lost in the first round of the playoffs. Still, the atmosphere around town in incredible and a new era of Redskins football—an era during which playoff appearances were the expectation—came into being.

I need to insert a few disclaimers here. The final book may not look exactly like this; I might choose to add or delete information to the headers before each season, and I might add or delete scrapbook stories to this season. In addition, while the excerpt has been pretty thoroughly proofread, the final, professional editing has not yet been done so a typo or two might still be lurking.

Still, you'll get an idea of what the book is all about. Look for more samples coming soon. If you like what you see and you want to be notified when the book comes out to be able to take advantage of pre-publication specials, just shoot me an email at rich.tandler+book@gmail.com and I'll be sure you're on the list.

The Redskins Chronicle excerpt--1971