The Meaning of Success

Casey Gerald sets forth a bold new direction for the American Dream.
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Speaking Engagements

Casey Gerald shares his powerful coming-of-age story, one that straddles the complex intersection of race, class, religion, sexuality, and masculinity.  His electrifying talks flip the American Dream narrative on its head, offering a testament to how every person deserves to hold onto their humanity and inspiring audiences to question the very meaning of success.

Physical & Digital Books

In this meditative memoir turned incisive manifesto, Casey Gerald shares his journey towards his disenchantment with society’s definition of achievement, and his painful realization that his own ascension fits into a larger scheme. Instead of becoming complicit in the narrative that narrows lives down to stereotypes of success and failure, Gerald suggests how we might build a new foundation to sustain the richness of our differences.

Digital Content

Bonus Content

Discussion guides encourage dialogue around popular tropes of the “American Dream,” and prompts current and future leaders to define what success does and should mean to them.

In his magnetic TED talk, Casey Gerald traces the drama of his life back to an East Texas church on the night of December 31, 1999, the night he believed the world was to end. When the rapture didn’t arrive, he searched for a new savior — at Yale, Lehman Brothers, Harvard Business School and his own nonprofit — but found each a disappointment. Gerald urges us all to question our beliefs, to embrace doubt and to find the courage to believe in something new.

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“[Gerald delivers] an extraordinary portrait of what it means to live on both the bottom and the top of American life.”
Anand Giridharadas
“Gerald…may be a genuine visionary. His beautifully written memoir….makes a powerful argument for societal change.”
Harvard Business Review
“[Gerald] has pulled off the... most deeply personal and most engagingly spiritual statement of our time by just looking outside his window and inside himself. Extraordinary.”
Marlon James
“[Gerald] delivers a beautifully written cautionary tale about the toll taken by society even on those like him, fortunate enough to defy the tremendous odds against their success.”
Vulture
“Undeniably inspirational.”
Vanity Fair

Program Topics

  • There Will Be No Miracles Here

    Casey Gerald’s story has the arc of a classic rags-to-riches tale, but he soon discovered there was a steep cost to his success. “If to live as we are is destroying us,” he asks, “what would it mean to truly live?” In this talk, Gerald turns the American Dream narrative on its head, inspiring audiences to question–even shatter–this nation’s most cherished myths.

There Will Be No Miracles Here

There Will Be No Miracles Here

A Memoir

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2018 BY NPR AND THE NEW YORK TIMES

A PBS NEWSHOUR–NEW YORK TIMES BOOK CLUB PICK

 

Casey Gerald comes to our fractured times as a uniquely visionary witness whose life has spanned seemingly unbridgeable divides. His story begins at the end of the world: Dallas, New Year’s Eve 1999, when he gathers with the congregation of his grandfather’s black evangelical church to see which of them will be carried off. When Gerald is recruited to play football at Yale, he enters a world he’s never dreamed of, the anteroom to secret societies and success on Wall Street, in Washington, and beyond. But even as he attains the inner sanctums of power, Gerald sees how the world crushes those who live at its margins. He sees how the elite perpetuates the salvation stories that keep others from rising. And he sees, most painfully, how his own ascension is part of the scheme.

 

There Will Be No Miracles Here has the arc of a classic rags-to-riches tale, but it stands the American Dream narrative on its head. If to live as we are is destroying us, it asks, what would it mean to truly live? Intense, incantatory, shot through with sly humor and quiet fury, There Will Be No Miracles Here inspires us to question–even shatter–and reimagine our most cherished myths.

 

FORMATS AVAILABLE: Hardcover, eBook, audiobook

 

PAGE COUNT; PUBLICATION DATE: 400 pages; October 2, 2018

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There Will Be No Miracles Here

Stunningly original … By breaking every rule of the … genre, [Gerald has] created something unique and sublime: a beautiful chronicle of a life as yet unfinished … a shining and sincere miracle of a book.

—NPR

His life, and this memoir, serve as proof of his prodigious talents, of the truth that, for the gifted like him, struggles … can yield something miraculous.

—New York Times Book Review
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