1. BESTSELLING AUTHOR: The Tender Bar spent 11 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and has sold over 550,000 copies between hardcover and trade paperback. Moehringer also received credit as coauthor of Andre Agassi's Open (11/09), which spent 16 weeks on New York Times bestseller list and has sold 378,000 copies in hardcover.

2. STUNNING REVIEWS FOR TENDER BAR: The Tender Bar received extraordinary reviews in USA Today ("A lovely coming-of-age memoir. Heartbreaking and hilarious."); the New York Post (". . . astounding, artful memoir."); the Washington Post ("Funny, vivid, and clever."); People (. . . a beautiful love letter home."); and in many other publications. 

3. GREAT TRUE HISTORY: Sutton is in the same pantheon as Capone, Dillinger, etc., except a much nicer guy. Moehringer did a great deal of research for the book, which is generally based on historical record.

4. TIMELY TOPIC: Sutton was a hero in his time for robbing the banks that “robbed” the people. We are in a similar political moment.

5. GREAT OFF THE BOOK PAGE PUBLICITY OPPORTUNITIES: Most of the book takes place in New York City (with short trips upstate and to Philadelphia).
 

Willie Sutton was driven by two things—a lost love and a deep hatred of banks. Among the most notorious criminals in American history, known to police as the Babe Ruth of Bank Robbers, Sutton spent half his life, off and on, in prison, until Christmas Eve, 1969, when he walked out for good. His surprise pardon sparked a media frenzy. Every journalist and talk show host in America wanted an interview. But Sutton granted just one. Sixty-eight years old, in failing health, he spent all that first night and the next day with a newspaper reporter and photographer, driving around New York City, visiting the scenes of his many crimes, betrayals, heartbreaks, and escapes. The result was a strangely cursory front-page story, filled with half-truths, errors, and few revelations. Notably absent was any mention of Sutton’s first love, the girl who led him into a life of crime, who was his first accomplice, who broke his heart. Sutton, a historical novel based on extensive research, is a comic, poignant, gritty imagining of that mysterious Christmas, and the remarkable life that preceded it, the center of which was a doomed, dangerous romance.