Say the name Pat Robertson to ten different people and you will get ten different reactions. To some, he's the televangelist host of The 700 Club, expounding a fundamentalist Christian philosophy. To others, he's a member in good standing of the American aristocracy, the son of a United States Senator and a descendent of the Duke of Marlborough.

To savvy businesspeople, he's the CEO of International Family Entertainment, a publicly traded company that owns The Family Channel, Mary Tyler Moore Productions, and The Ice Capades. He is a global businessman with media holdings in Asia, the United Kingdom, and Africa. He is the nation's number three cable operator, behind Ted Turner and HBO. Politicians know him as the head of the 1.7 million member Christian Coalition, widely considered to be the most powerful lobbying group in the United States.

Pat Robertson is all these things and more, which makes him a media mogul of astonishing wealth, power, and influence.

The Empire God Built takes you inside Pat Robertson's media machine, from the state-of-the-art television studios and telemarketing offices in Virginia Beach to the halls of Regent University to a Manhattan Christian Coalition meeting, complete with satellite feed from headquarters.

Author Alec Foege pieces together the entire corporate puzzle, showing not only how Robertson assembled his empire, but how all the segments work together in pursuit of supremely ambitious goals measured both by fiscal and political bottom lines. It is a compelling examination of the power of television, technology, and big business, and how one man mastered all three to spread his message around the world.