Co-sponsored by the Clements Center for Southwest Studies, SMU
Named a "Best Book of 2018" by NPR and the New York Times, There Will Be No Miracles Here is a memoir that has the arc of a classic rags-to-riches tale, but turns the American Dream narrative on its head.
Casey Gerald's story begins in the Oak Cliff neighborhood of 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 in the Rapture. His beautiful, fragile mother disappears frequently and mysteriously, leaving him and his sister to live on her disability checks. When Gerald—following in the footsteps of his father, a gridiron legend who literally broke his back for the team—is recruited to play football at Yale, he enters a world of 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, how the elite perpetuate the salvation stories that keep others from rising, and, most painfully, how his own ascension is part of the scheme. After receiving an MBA from Harvard Business School, Casey Gerald co-founded MBAs Across America. He has been featured at TED and SXSW and on the cover of Fast Company.
"Somehow Casey Gerald has pulled off the most urgently political, most deeply personal, and most engagingly spiritual statement of our time by just looking outside his window and inside himself. Extraordinary." —Marlon James
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TICKET PRICES
Public: $30 Member/Educator: $25 Student: $15