The arts and culture sector is in crisis—a crisis of relevance. Whether it’s grappling with dwindling audience sizes, shifting trends in philanthropy, or addressing social challenges, experts have been documenting this slow decline for decades. At the core of Alex Sarian’s international career is the conviction that cultural organizations must embrace a greater civic purpose and build a new business model—one based on the social impact of the arts. Throughout The Audacity of Relevance, Sarian engages in conversations with leaders from across industries to paint a potential future for arts organizations—a future built on measuring our sector’s success by how positively we can influence the many local communities that surround us. It doesn’t matter if you’re a seasoned executive or are just beginning in your career—the principles and anecdotes in this book will inspire you to see the world of arts and culture for what it truly is: filled with endless possibilities for reinvention.
What do the London Science Museum, California Shakespeare Theater, and ShaNaNa have in common? They are all fighting for relevance in an often indifferent world. The Art of Relevance is your guide to mattering more to more people. You'll find inspiring examples, rags-to-relevance case studies, research-based frameworks, and practical advice on how your work can be more vital to your community. Whether you work in museums or libraries, parks or theaters, churches or afterschool programs, relevance can work for you. Break through shallow connection. Unlock meaning for yourself and others. Find true relevance and shine.
"An essential starting point for those assessing the Obama presidency.” —Washington Monthly Two presidencies later, the time has never been better to revisit the legacy of Barack Obama. In Audacity, New York Magazine writer Jonathan Chait makes the unassailable case that, in the eyes of history, Obama will be viewed as one of America’s best and most accomplished presidents. Over the course of eight years, Barack Obama has amassed an array of outstanding achievements. His administration saved the American economy from collapse, expanded health insurance to millions who previously could not afford it, negotiated an historic nuclear deal with Iran, helped craft a groundbreaking international climate accord, reined in Wall Street and crafted a new vision of racial progress. He has done all of this despite a left that frequently disdained him as a sellout, and a hysterical right that did everything possible to destroy his agenda even when they agreed with what he was doing. Now, as the page turns to our next Commander in Chief, Jonathan Chait, acclaimed as one of the most incisive and meticulous political commentators in America, digs deep into Obama’s record on major policy fronts—economics, the environment, domestic reform, health care, race, foreign policy, and civil rights—to demonstrate why history will judge our forty-fourth president as among the greatest in history. Audacity does not shy away from Obama’s failures, most notably in foreign policy. Yet Chait convincingly shows that President Obama has accomplished what candidate Obama said he would, despite overwhelming opposition—and that the hopes of those who voted for him have not been dashed despite the smokescreen of extremist propaganda and the limits of short-term perspective.
Based on his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention, The Audacity of Hope helped catapult the then unknown Illinois senator into the national spotlight. Building off a sermon by his former pastor who used the same phrase, The Audacity of Hope laid out the ideas that would become the foundations of his 2008 presidential campaign. The book has 3 main points it tries to get across; that despite political differences all Americans share a core belief in community and in freedom, that a lot of our problems are due to politicians becoming more beholden to their donors than to their constituents, and that wars like the one on terrorism can’t be won using violence, since ultimately they’re wars of ideas. Do you want more free book summaries like this? Download our app for free at https://www.QuickRead.com/App and get access to hundreds of free book and audiobook summaries. DISCLAIMER: This book summary is meant as a preview and not a replacement for the original work. If you like this summary please consider purchasing the original book to get the full experience as the original author intended it to be. If you are the original author of any book on QuickRead and want us to remove it, please contact us at [email protected].
The forty-fourth president's campaign manager reveals the strategies that he credits with Obama's successful primary and general elections, explaining how a combination of technology and grassroots organization is revolutionizing politics.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Barack Obama’s lucid vision of America’s place in the world and call for a new kind of politics that builds upon our shared understandings as Americans, based on his years in the Senate “In our lowdown, dispiriting era, Obama’s talent for proposing humane, sensible solutions with uplifting, elegant prose does fill one with hope.”—Michael Kazin, The Washington Post In July 2004, four years before his presidency, Barack Obama electrified the Democratic National Convention with an address that spoke to Americans across the political spectrum. One phrase in particular anchored itself in listeners’ minds, a reminder that for all the discord and struggle to be found in our history as a nation, we have always been guided by a dogged optimism in the future, or what Obama called “the audacity of hope.” The Audacity of Hope is Barack Obama’s call for a different brand of politics—a politics for those weary of bitter partisanship and alienated by the “endless clash of armies” we see in congress and on the campaign trail; a politics rooted in the faith, inclusiveness, and nobility of spirit at the heart of “our improbable experiment in democracy.” He explores those forces—from the fear of losing to the perpetual need to raise money to the power of the media—that can stifle even the best-intentioned politician. He also writes, with surprising intimacy and self-deprecating humor, about settling in as a senator, seeking to balance the demands of public service and family life, and his own deepening religious commitment. At the heart of this book is Barack Obama’s vision of how we can move beyond our divisions to tackle concrete problems. He examines the growing economic insecurity of American families, the racial and religious tensions within the body politic, and the transnational threats—from terrorism to pandemic—that gather beyond our shores. And he grapples with the role that faith plays in a democracy—where it is vital and where it must never intrude. Underlying his stories is a vigorous search for connection: the foundation for a radically hopeful political consensus. Only by returning to the principles that gave birth to our Constitution, Obama says, can Americans repair a political process that is broken, and restore to working order a government that has fallen dangerously out of touch with millions of ordinary Americans. Those Americans are out there, he writes—“waiting for Republicans and Democrats to catch up with them.”
One of the most gifted literary essayists of his generation defends stylistic boldness and intellectual daring in American letters. Over the last decade William Giraldi has established himself as a charismatic and uncompromising literary essayist, “a literature-besotted Midas of prose” (Cynthia Ozick). Now, American Audacity gathers a selection of his most powerful considerations of American writers and themes—a “gorgeous fury of language and sensibility” (Walter Kirn)—including an introductory call to arms for twenty-first-century American literature, and a new appreciation of James Baldwin’s genius for nonfiction. With potent insights into the storied tradition of American letters, and written with a “commitment to the dynamism and dimensions of language,” American Audacity considers giants from the past (Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Harper Lee, Denis Johnson), some of our most well-known living critics and novelists (Harold Bloom, Stanley Fish, Katie Roiphe, Cormac McCarthy, Allan Gurganus, Elizabeth Spencer), as well as those cultural-literary themes that have concerned Giraldi as an American novelist (bestsellers, the “problem” of Catholic fiction, the art of hate mail, and his viral essay on bibliophilia). Demanding that literature be audacious, and urgent in its convictions, American Audacity is itself an act of intellectual daring, a compendium shot through with Giraldi’s “emboldened and emboldening critical voice” (Sven Birkerts). At a time when literature is threatened by ceaseless electronic bombardment, Giraldi argues that literature “must do what literature has always done: facilitate those silent spaces, remain steadfastly itself in its employment of slowness, interiority, grace, and in its marshaling of aesthetic sophistication and complexity.” American Audacity is ultimately an assertion of intelligence and discernment from a maker of “perfectly paced prose” (The New Yorker), a book that reaffirms the pleasure and wisdom of the deepest literary values.
At eight years old in 1968 Magnus Duruji saw the evil of Communism and Islamic fundamentalism through the ravages of a civil war, his mother dragging him and his four little siblings into an underground bomb bunker behind his house, built by his father with the help of his brother and a male refugee. Then in 1970 at age eleven Magnus , his parents and his seven siblings survived the civil war after barrage of roaring and thundering brutal bombardment in my little farming country hometown from then Soviet Union, now Russia, and from the Arab Islamic fighter pilots in Russian MIGS and British Harrier Jets on behalf of then divided national Nigerian government , but, only to make it into the United States for freedom to be thrown into Prison on a disguised U.S. Department of Justice Immigration illegal imposition when applicable laws weren't retroactive in non criminal dynamic events relevant to Magnus Duruji. Unconstitutionally imprisoned by the U&.S. department Of Justice Immigration ICE, and consequently shuffled from one prison to another in his quest to become a United States citizen, Magnus fasted and cumulatively cried out to God for Divine intervention. Magnus exchanged a solemn oath of promise with God if He will intervene and make His presence practically clear that He God exists. Well, the rest of the fight for for freedom to become an American Citizen was Divinely written. This is the story about my childhood journey for Freedom from age eight to now 52, tipping in the United States of America. " In America you fight, you don't give up" Magnus Duruji, quoted in the Columbus Dispatch February 23, 2012; Associated Press February 24,2012The Audacity of Courage challenges our conscience in relation to our belief in a free democratic system by taking us back to examine our relationship with the Purest form of Goodness: God. Through perseverance , a new level of humility was attained but not without audacious spiritually directed content of missteps and emergentic guidelines that may lead freedom. But, for this quest of freedom to be romantically fulfilled, the emergentic driving energy will challenge the very pristine document that currently holds the conscience of mankind to order: The Constitution of the United States. The issues that emerge in an effort to derail the mother of life known as "freedom" as enshrined in the U.S. constitution will also escalate through invisible rowdy noise of energy calling for the release of an innocent man through pious legal frame work. Interestingly, the journey of freedom for American citizen Magnus Duruji only serves as an instrument or tool if you will to showcase the the character of the American mind. "What is the mind mind"? The American mind is the in-dominate spirit of the American people to sacrifice their blood, their reputation, their wealth and their character for the good of all. This spirit of true will of character representative for all Americans in the people of the Great State Of Ohio ( my adopted home State) is what makes America " The Land and Home of the freest people in the world. Ohio fought for me and my family free of color and accent. They only had interest in the preservation of the Great Constitution of the United States of America. Well, the audacity of courage is a politically incorrect book of the 21st century. it calls out the blights of arrogance in the current politically correct world we live. The American mind endures the truth it hurts in the politically correct society we live in. Thus, the Audacity of Courage highlights the story of a man who by his fathers mythological bedtime stories aspired for the United States of America. Having obtained permissible work student Visa directly from then U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria Thomas Pickering Jr. Magnus Duruji arrived in the United States in 1981. "Will Magnus Duruji be welcomed by ICE" To say the least, his welcome will only become unfolding unconstitutional events in profiling.
In the tradition of You Are a Badass, women's empowerment coach Gina DeVee shares motivational steps for how to become the queen of your own life. In every woman lives a Queen who is confident, poised, and clear on her calling. She is bold and unapologetic. Drawing from her spiritual connection and feminine nature, she accesses the power to manifest her desires and fulfill her purpose. The era of invisible women is over. Your time to be Queen has arrived. In The Audacity to Be Queen, women's empowerment and success coach Gina DeVee invites modern-day women to embrace the endless possibilities that are rightfully ours. Permission granted to take ourselves off the back burner financially, romantically, physically, and socially-and step into our greatness. The days of dismissing ourselves and our desires end here. No longer must we pretend to be anything other than brilliant, capable, and fabulous. The world needs women like us to own our power, raise our standards, and contribute our talents like never before. When a woman chooses to be a Queen, everyone benefits. With spectacular flair, beautiful pearls of wisdom, and lifechanging stories of unexpected triumph, The Audacity to BeQueen takes you on a journey to empower the Queen within. Gina DeVee shares the steps, exercises, meditations, prayers, and journal prompts to release all forms of self-doubt and self-sabotage so you can discover the best version of you. Only from the position of Queen can you fulfill your calling, and in this pivotal moment, time is of the essence. The age of the Queen is now.
