Nothing to Lose, the autobiography by Brazilian religious leader Edir Macedo.

Bishop Edir Macedo Bezerra is a controversial Brazilian religious leader, the founder of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God.  His point of view on other faiths, particularly Catholicism, has led him to legal problems and accusations of charlatanism and fraud in several occasions, but that doesn’t stop him from being one of the biggest religious leaders nowadays. And now his autobiography debuted around the world.

Macedo is 67 years old, was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In 1963, he began a career as a civil servant working with the state-run lottery of Rio de Janeiro, later working at the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics.

This particular bishop was raised Catholic, but by 1970 he converted to a Pentecostal and in the late 70s he founded the  “Neo-Pentecostal” Universal Church of the Kingdom of God in Rio de Janeiro.

In 1979 he left his career and started a new one, spreading the Word of God. He has been adored and accused since then because of his rapidly growing religious movement and his teaching of the prosperity theology has been a source of controversy.

Married to Ester Bezerra for 41 years, the couple has two daughters: Cristiane and Viviane, as well as an adopted son, Moises. Edir Macedo insists on pointing out the unconditional support he receives from his wife and the importance of the role women fulfill in the family as teachers in the ways of the faith and caregivers for husbands and children.

Edir Macedo as a writer

As an evangelical writer, Edir Macedo stands out with more than 10 million books sold, and over 34 titles published. Titles to his best-sellers are Orixás, Caboclos and Guias and In the Footsteps of Jesus. Both surpassed three million copies sold only in Brazil.

Last Saturday, Feb. 9, Editorial Planeta Group launched  Nothing to Lose, his autobiography, which is already a best-seller in Brazil and several other places worldwide. The event was set in the emblematic McNally Jackson Books Bookstore in Manhattan, where thousands of people were expected for the occasion.

This bookstore, located on Prince St. and Lafayette St. in Manhattan, is selling it from this day but for those who cannot attend, the book is also on sale through the website www.mcnallyjackson.com from the day of the New York City launch.

Planeta Group wanted to establish a new record in America -as they did in almost every launch for this autobiography wherever it was- and therefore set the goal of selling more than 60,000 copies of the book in a bookstore during a single day in the United States. “These phenomena of sales has not been seen before in America, but with the launch in New York of Nothing to Lose, we are going to beat the record of sales of a book in a day in the United States in a single bookstore,“ declared Eugenio Roca, director of sales for Planeta Group, when announcing the event.

The book was written together with Douglas Tavolaro, writer and journalist, who will be at the event, signing copies next to the Bishop Wilson Santos and Romualdo Panceiro, representing Edir Macedo in the United States. In it – the book has been translated to English and Spanish but was originally written in Portuguese-,  Macedo tells how he began his incredible journey that led him to become the owner of the second largest television station in Brazil and one of the biggest living religious leaders of today.