In this culmination of five decades of acclaimed studies in presidential history, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin offers an illuminating exploration of the early development, growth, and exercise of leadership. Are leaders born or made? Where does ambition come from? How does adversity affect the growth of leadership? Does the leader make the times or do the times make the leader? In “Leadership,” Goodwin draws upon the four presidents she has studied most closely—Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson (in civil rights)—to show how they recognized leadership qualities within themselves and were recognized as leaders by others. By looking back to their first entries into public life, we encounter them at a time when their paths were filled with confusion, fear, and hope.

In this culmination of five decades of acclaimed studies in presidential history, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin offers an illuminating exploration of the early development, growth, and exercise of leadership. Her interest in leadership began more than half a century ago as a professor at Harvard. Her experiences working for LBJ in the White House and later assisting him on his memoirs led to her bestselling Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream. She followed up with the Pulitzer Prize–winning No Ordinary Time: Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. She earned the Lincoln Prize for the runaway bestseller Team of Rivals, the basis for Steven Spielberg’s Academy Award-winning film Lincoln, and the Carnegie Medal for The Bully Pulpit, the New York Times bestselling chronicle of the friendship between Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.  

From award-winning actress and political activist America Ferrera comes a vibrant and varied collection of first person accounts from prominent figures about the experience of growing up between cultures. Ferrera is an award-winning actress, producer, director and activist. She is best known for her breakthrough role as “Betty Suarez” on ABC’s hit comedy, “Ugly Betty.” She produces and stars in the acclaimed NBC workplace comedy, “Superstore,” currently in its fourth season. In 2016 Ferrera cofounded HARNESS, an organization connecting storytellers and activists to amplify the cultural narrative around social justice. She speaks throughout the country as an advocate for human and civil rights and was the opening speaker at the monumental Women’s March on Washington in January 2017. 

Kate Atkinson’s new novel, “Transcription,” is a dramatic story of WWII espionage, betrayal, and loyalty. Atkinson’s first novel, “Behind the Scenes at the Museum,” won the Whitbread (now Costa) Book of the Year Award. She has been a critically acclaimed, bestselling author ever since, with over one million copies of her books in print in the United States. She is the author of a collection of short stories, “Not the End of the World,” and of the novels “Life After Life,”  “A God in Ruins,”  “Human Croquet,” “Emotionally Weird,” “Case Histories,” “One Good Turn,” “When Will There Be Good News?,” and “Started Early, Took My Dog.”

Jeff Bridges’ Award-Winning Documentary ‘Living in the Future’s Past’ Brings a Fresh Perspective on Being Human for our Challenging Times and Asks “What Kind of Future Would You Like to See?” “Living In The Future’s Past” explores who we are, where we come from, how we think and why we do the things we do. Bridges joins scientist and astronaut Piers Sellers, “Being Ecologica”l author Timothy Morton, physicist and Author, “Elastic: Flexible Thinking In a Time of Change,” Leonard Mlodinow, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander General Wesley Clark, and author of “Emotional Intelligence,” Daniel Goleman among many other experts and profound thinkers. 

Soraya Chemaly is an award-winning writer and activist whose work focuses on the role of gender in culture, politics, religion, and media. She is the Director of the Women’s Media Center Speech Project and an advocate for women’s freedom of expression and expanded civic and political engagement. Her articles appear in Time, the Verge, The Guardian, The Nation, HuffPost, and The Atlantic. Following in the footsteps of classic feminist manifestos like The Feminine Mystique and Our Bodies, Ourselves, Rage Becomes Her is an eye-opening book for the twenty-first century woman: an engaging, accessible credo offering us the tools to re-understand our anger and harness its power to create lasting positive change.

We welcome Dan Siegel back to our stage for his new book, Aware, his groundbreaking new book introducing readers to his pioneering, science-based meditation practice. He is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and the founding co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA. He is also the Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute which focuses on the development of mindsight, which teaches insight, empathy, and integration in individuals, families and communities.  Aware provides practical instruction for mastering the Wheel of Awareness, a life-changing tool for cultivating more focus, presence, and peace in one’s day-to-day life. An in-depth look at the science that underlies meditation’s effectiveness, this book teaches readers how to harness the power of the principle “Where attention goes, neural firing flows, and neural connection grows.” 

In Sapiens, he explored our past. In Homo Deus, he looked to our future. Now, one of the most innovative thinkers on the planet turns to the present to make sense of today’s most pressing issues. How do computers and robots change the meaning of being human? How do we deal with the epidemic of fake news? Are nations and religions still relevant? What should we teach our children? Yuval Noah Harari’s “21 Lessons for the 21st Century” is a probing and visionary investigation into today’s most urgent issues as we move into the uncharted territory of the future. As technology advances faster than our understanding of it, hacking becomes a tactic of war, and the world feels more polarized than ever, Harari addresses the challenge of navigating life in the face of constant and disorienting change and raises the important questions we need to ask ourselves in order to survive.

You’ve likely seen Jake Tapper behind the desk at CNN, as the network’s award-winning Chief Washington Correspondent and anchor of two flagship news programs. In 2012, Jake wrote the New York Times bestseller The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor, a nonfiction account of untold heroism in Afghanistan. The year 2018 marks another milestone in Jake’s esteemed career, with the publication of his first political thriller, THE HELLFIRE CLUB, set in 1950s Washington, DC. Arriving at a time when capital intrigue is at unprecedented levels, THE HELLFIRE CLUB is a compulsively readable novel by one of DC’s most insightful and knowledgeable observers. 

Marc Maron says of Patricia Williams: “Mind-blowing. She was able to elevate her personal stories of horror, sadness, violence, insanity into something that people can understand and relate to and see into a world that many of us don’t know.”  Patricia Williams, the fifth child of an alcoholic single mother, came of age in Atlanta at the height of the crack epidemic. At 12, she had her first boyfriend; by 15 she was a mother of two. Williams wanted to give her children the kind of life she’d always dreamed of, but with no education or job skills her options were slim. Thus began Williams’ lucrative career as a drug dealer. After numerous run-ins with the law and a stint behind bars, Williams decided to turn her life around. She now goes by the stage name Ms. Pat and enjoys a successful career as a comedian. Williams lives in Indianapolis with her husband and three children.