Downtown Business Breakfast

The 2013 Downtown Business Breakfast speaker was Eric Metaxas, author of the acclaimed 2011 New York Times best-seller Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.

Called a "biography of uncommon power," Bonhoeffer has appeared on numerous best-of-the-year lists, and has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, The New Republic, and Harper's, as well as on National Public Radio. His 2007 biography Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery was the "official companion book" to the 2006 feature film Amazing Grace.

In a decidedly eclectic career, Metaxas has written for "VeggieTales," Chuck Colson, and The New York Times, a trio not ordinarily found in the same sentence. He is a best-selling author whose biographies, children's books, and works of popular apologetics have been published worldwide. The Hartford Courant has declared that figuring Metaxas out is "like trying to stick a pushpin in a cyclone."

Metaxas' humor writing has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly and The New York Times. His book and movie reviews, essays, and poetry have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Christianity Today, "National Review Online," "Beliefnet," and "First Things." The cult classic Don't You Believe It! –– his book-length parody of the Ripley's Believe It Or Not! books –– led novelist Mark Helprin to dub Metaxas "the true heir to The Far Side's Gary Larson."

Some Former Downtown Business Breakfast Speakers

• David Brooks, prominent cultural and political commentator
• Tavis Smiley, broadcast journalist, author, advocate, and philanthropist
• Benjamin S. Carson, professor of neurosurgery, oncology, plastic surgery, and pediatrics at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
• Robert J. Shiller, distinguished professor of economics at Yale University
• Carly Fiorina, best-selling author; strategic advisor to business and government
• Vali Nasr, senior fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations
• David McCullough, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of 1776 and John Adams
• Paul A. Gigot, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal
• George Mitchell, former U.S. senator