2023 SPEAKER BOOKSTORE

Facing a challenging economy, too many Americans despair of improving their lives. But John Hope Bryant insists that America is still the Land of Opportunity. Up from Nothing revives the forgotten story of the American Dream. It’s about our beginnings as a nation of go-getters who believed they were winners before they won.

Using the inspiring story of his own rise from humble beginnings, and that of his parents and grandparents, Bryant shows how individually we can change our mindset from survivor to thriver to winner and move beyond just getting by or being financially independent to becoming wildly successful. Collectively, we need to become a nation of winners once again.

Faster Cures | Accelerating the Future of Health
Michael Milken with Geoffrey Evans Moore
April 2023

Partly a memoir and partly a recent history of medicine, the definitive account of Michael Milken’s lifetime work to accelerate medicine’s evolution from a dark past to a bright future.

What if cleaning early-stage cancers from your body could become as routine as going to the dentist to clean your teeth, or if a single vaccine could protect you against multiple viruses, or if gene editing could eliminate many birth defects and slow the aging process? Mike Milken believes these, and many other advances, are within reach.

Beginning with a description of the 1950s civilization and culture that helped shape Milken’s early views, Faster Cures traces the life-extending acceleration of progress in medical research, public health, and clinical treatments over the seven decades since Milken’s childhood—and shows how he helped transform the process of developing disease cures. 

Andrew Young and the Making of Modern Atlanta
Andrew Young, Harvey Newman and Andrea Young
November 2016

ANDREW YOUNG AND THE MAKING OF MODERN ATLANTA tells the story of the decisions that shaped Atlanta’s growth from a small, provincial Deep South city to an international metropolis impacting and influencing global affairs. When Mayor William Hartsfield coined the term “City too Busy to Hate” in the 1950s, who would have imagined that within fifty years Atlanta would have the world’s busiest airport, rank as the eighth largest metropolitan area in the United States or, that this once racially-segregated city would host the Centennial Olympic Games and play host to the world in 1996?

Andrew Young arrived in Atlanta in 1961 and has played a key role in Atlanta’s development ever since–in the Civil Rights Movement, as the city’s representative in Congress, and as Mayor. The authors have woven this perspective with archival material, media accounts, and the reflections of scores of other key elected officials, community, business, and civic leaders, and civil servants on the making of modern Atlanta.

The Third Reconstruction | Moral Mondays, Fusion Politics, and the Rise of a New Justice Movement
Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
January 2016

A modern-day civil rights champion tells the stirring story of how he helped start a movement to bridge America’s racial divide.

Over the summer of 2013, the Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II led more than a hundred thousand people at rallies across North Carolina to protest restrictions to voting access and an extreme makeover of state government. These protests—the largest state government–focused civil disobedience campaign in American history—came to be known as Moral Mondays and have since blossomed in states as diverse as Florida, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Ohio, and New York.

At a time when divide-and-conquer politics are exacerbating racial strife and economic inequality, Rev. Barber offers an impassioned, historically grounded argument that Moral Mondays are hard evidence of an embryonic Third Reconstruction in America.

Disruptive Thinking
Bishop T.D. Jakes
May 2023

Think differently and find the courage to challenge the status quo with this mindset-shifting guide to meaningful change.

For most of our lives, we are encouraged to trudge along the well-worn paths of those who have come before us. We learn the rules – in our families, in our schools, in our workplaces, in our churches – and most of the messages we receive tell us that following the rules will allow us to arrive at the lives we desire. 

But when change becomes not only desirable but also urgently necessary, this way of being no longer serves us. In fact, in every human endeavor, every major leap forward, has involved a cataclysmic challenge to existing ways of thinking and being. Breakthroughs, by definition, run against the grain and almost always encounter skepticism and opposition. 

Moonshot | Inside Pfizer’s Nine-Month Race to Make the Impossible Possible
Dr. Albert Bourla
March 2022

The exclusive, first-hand, behind-the-scenes story of how Pfizer raced to create the first Covid-19 vaccine, told by Pfizer’s Chairman and CEO Dr. Albert Bourla.

A riveting, fast-paced, inside look at one of the most incredible private sector achievements in history, Moonshot recounts the intensive nine months in 2020 when the scientists at Pfizer, under the visionary leadership of Dr. Albert Bourla, made “the impossible possible”—creating, testing, and manufacturing a safe and effective Covid-19 vaccine that previously would have taken years to develop. 

Dr. Bourla chronicles how the brilliant, dedicated minds at Pfizer, under the enormous strains of the global pandemic, overcame a series of crises that were compounded by social and political unrest, and reveals the doubts, decisions, obstacles, and failures they encountered. As Dr. Bourla makes clear, Pfizer’s success wasn’t due to luck; it was because of preparation driven by four simple values—Courage, Excellence, Equity, and Joy.