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Arianna Huffington

Presented by Progressive Forum Houston at Wortham Theater Center - Cullen Theater

September 15, 2010

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Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, will appear at The Progressive Forum Wednesday September 15, 2010, at the Wortham Center, Cullen Theater, at 7:30 PM. Books will be on sale at the event, Huffington will sign books and greet fans at the end of the evening.

Huffington is releasing a new book, Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream (Crown Business, Random House, releasing September 7).

Randall Morton, Progressive Forum president, said, “Arianna Huffington represents many important things at once, she’s successfully pioneering the world of online media, her book provides an important focus on the middle class plight, she’s a star political commentator, and she’s an inspiration for women.”

In launching her new book, Third World America, Huffington is also launching an online component, a new section with the same name on her website, HuffingtonPost.com, which will continue her stories of ordinary middle class Americans with a special focus on solutions.

Huffington says of her book, “Clearly, we’re not in the middle of a normal recovery. I detail all the ways this is happening, and the reasons why. Just as important, I also talk about the steps we can all take to help stop the slide. As soon as I finished writing the book, I knew I wanted to keep telling the stories of the middle class families whose lives have been turned upside down by the economic crisis, and to provide interactive tools that would allow people to get involved.

“That’s why HuffPost is launching a Third World America section to bear witness to what is happening to the American middle class in small towns and big cities all across the country. And we will, every day, focus on the solutions that are making a difference in the lives of ordinary Americans.”

Of the book, Elizabeth Warren said, “A voice of conscience in a time when we need conscience more than ever… Arianna is right: it’s not too late for citizens to wake up politicians or to take matters into their own hands. Time is short: read this book now.”

Robert Reich says, “With great passion and insight, Arianna tells it like it is. Blending outrage and optimism - indignation at how America’s crony capitalists have wrecked the nation’s great middle class, and unremitting hope that our people will rise and put things right - she explains what’s happening and what must be done. Here, clearly, is a book for our times.”

Arianna Huffington launched The Huffington Post in May 2005, a news, opinion, and blog-site with a progressive perspective. An article in Newsweek of July 25 said, “If you had to declare a winner among internet media companies today, the victor easily would be Arianna Huffington. Her site, The Huffington Post, attracted 24.3 million unique visitors last month, five times as much traffic as many new-media rivals, more than The Washington Post and USA Today, nearly as many as The New York Times…. And Huffpo has finally started to eke out a profit.”

Arianna Huffington is also a nationally syndicated columnist and co-host of the popular public radio show, Left, Right, & Center. She is the author of 13 books which also include Right is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution, and Made us All Less Safe (2008); and On Becoming Fearless…in Love, Work, and Life (2007). She is a constant presence on television shows such as Charlie Rose, Larry King Live, Countdown with Keith Obermann, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and The O’Reilly Factor.

Huffington was born Arianna Stassinopoulos in Athens, Greece. She moved to England at the age of 16 and attended Cambridge University where she became the president of the Cambridge Union Society, the world’s oldest student debate society. She kept the name of her ex-husband, Michael Huffington, with whom she has two daughters. Time magazine named her among the top 100 most influential people in the world. The Financial Times named her among the 50 people who shaped the decade.

The Progressive Forum is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(C)(3) civic speaker organization presenting its events at The Wortham Center. It’s the only civic speaker organization in America dedicated expressly to progressive values. Its purpose is to enrich our democracy and culture by striving to present the greatest minds from all the fields of human endeavor, the sciences and the humanities as well as politics and public affairs, great minds it believes are advancing the success of individuals, our species, and life on the earth. This year of 2010 marks the fifth anniversary of The Progressive Forum.

The Progressive Forum premiered on June 13, 2005, with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Houston Mayor Bill White in a program called “Our Environmental Challenges.” Al Gore launched An Inconvenient Truth at The Progressive Forum, his first U.S. book event for that title. Others include Jared Diamond, Seymour Hersh, Molly Ivins, George Soros, Edward O. Wilson, Frank Rich, Garrison Keillor, Joe Klein, Tim Flannery, Anna Deavere Smith, Gloria Steinem, James Hansen, Ken Burns, George Lakoff, Robert Redford, Bill McKibben, Elizabeth Edwards, Larry Wilmore, T. Boone Pickens, Lester Brown, Nancy Pelosi, Brian Greene, and Karen Armstrong.

The Progressive Forum originated a new model in civic speaker organizations in Houston to deliver a higher quality experience in a theater rather than a hotel luncheon, as well as generate a much larger audience than traditional speaking events. The Progressive Forum operates similarly to a performing arts company by using the finest theaters, paying speaker fees to present top intellectual stars, and marketing throughout the region. It offers convenient box office services through its website allowing ticket buyers to print tickets at their computer in addition to traditional phone sales.

Founder and president, Randall R. Morton has owned Randall Morton International, Inc. for 34 years, an advertising and public relations agency whose clients have included leading oil equipment companies in the U.S., Japan, Mexico, and Europe. He served as an adjunct professor at the University of Tulsa teaching advertising design and copy writing. Morton created, produced, and hosted the Oilfield Breakfast Forum from 1994 to 2003, an industry speaker platform which is still the largest in the oil business. While earning a degree in government from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., he served as an issue writer for the Democratic National Committee.

Tickets range from $14 to $54. A limited number of $74 tickets are available which include a green room reception with Arianna Huffington at 6:45 PM, a complimentary signed book, and center-front seating.

Tickets are available at www.progressiveforumhouston.org  or by calling 832-251-0706. There is no physical box office except at the theater on event night.