Posted on Tuesday, October 31, 2017 by RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com on his AJC Radio & TV Talk blog
Eric Erickson's life has been crazy, both professionally and more importantly, personally.
Professionally, his stance against Donald Trump has not sit well with a huge swath of conservatives. He had genuine death threats against his family and his employer, Cox Media Group, hired armed guards to watch over his home for months. (Erickson's daily radio program on News 95.5 and AM 750 WSB is heard from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. weekdays. His boss Pete Spriggs said though they had occasionally had to hire guards to drive Neal Boortz to and from work, the venom and nastiness of some of the people going after Erickson was disheartening, to say the least.)
Last year, Erickson suffered serious blood clots in his lungs and almost died. At almost the same time, his wife Christy found out she had a tumor in her right lung, then another one in her left.
Facing mortality led to his current book "Before You Wake: Life Lessons From a Father To His Children." It gave him perspective, that politics doesn't matter nearly as much when you're knocking on death's door.
"I didn't want to write another book after the last two," Erickson said, referencing 2016's "You Will Be Made to Care: The War on Faith, Family and Your Freedom to Believe" and "The Wrong Type of Values." "I didn't find it fun. It was grueling. Last year, I wrote a column about what Christy and I went through, then David Brooks wrote about it. It took a life of its own. A publisher asked me if I could please write a book. I said okay. One thing led to another."
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