A Mensch Among NYC Trade Publishers

Meet Tony Lyons, the bold president of SKYHORSE PUBLISHING

By John Leake

The first time I met Tony Lyons, we talked about Norman Maclean’s famous novel, A River Runs Through It. I correctly deduced that Tony would know something about it, because his father, Nick Lyons (founder of the Lyons Press) has long been the foremost publisher of books about fly-fishing.

The history of A River Runs Through It is a notable example of the NYC trade publishing industry completely missing the mark. In the early seventies, when Maclean submitted the typescript, not a single acquiring editor at any of the major trade houses understood it. They all (daftly) thought that it was ONLY a book about fly-fishing—an esoteric subject that would never attract a general readership.

And so Maclean was obliged to find a publisher within the academic press—a humbling experience, widely perceived among literary authors as signifying that a book didn’t make the cut. The editor at the University of Chicago Press recognized that A River Runs Through It is not merely “a book about fly-fishing,” but a finely drawn story about the perennial themes of sin, grace, love, forgiveness, and redemption. Ultimately the book sold millions of copies, was adapted for cinema by Robert Redford and Brad Pitt, and almost doubled the size of the fly-fishing industry.

I thought about this bit of publishing history when I met Tony Lyons because he is alone among New York City trade publishers in recognizing the grim reality of the official pandemic response to COVID-19—namely, that it was driven by what I’ve recently started calling the Vaccine Mafia, and not by a good faith interest in public health.

Not only does Mr. Lyons have great discernment, he is genuinely interested in safeguarding individual liberty and the integrity of our Constitutional Republic. With his dedication to preserving our American Way of Life, he has aggressively acquired and published books by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (a close friend and collaborator), Edward Dowd, and Robert Malone.

Mr. Lyons makes a point of ignoring the trendy pieties, faddish obsessions, and official orthodoxies that have so gravely distorted American discourse in recent years. He bravely publishes authors no other trade publisher would touch. He does this from his conviction that unfashionable, heretical, and even ostracized voices still have a story to tell—perhaps even the greatest stories.

A couple of weeks ago he graciously published our book, The Courage to Face COVID-19, in a special hardcover edition. Yesterday, Children’s Health Defense TV broadcast our recent interview with Mr. Lyons. I believe is the most comprehensive and best illustrated audio-visual interview we’ve given to date—an interview that covers every facet of the greatest true crime story in history.