I’m a journalist and critic who fell in love with the ancient art of rhetoric through Shakespeare, Chaucer… and Barack Obama. It was when I watched Obama’s consciously and artfully classical oratory as he campaigned for the 2008 election that my undergraduate interest in tricolons, epistrophe, aposiopesis and all that jazz surged back to the front of my mind. I went on to write a 2011 book arguing that not only is this neglected area of study fascinating, but it is the most important tool imaginable to understand politics, language, and human nature itself. Where there is language, there is rhetoric.
I wrote
Words Like Loaded Pistols: The Power of Rhetoric from the Iron Age to the Information Age
Aristotle is the OG: the first person to think seriously about how persuading other people with words might be a craft that can be practised, learned, and taught.
He was the first to identify the three ways you convince someone – ethos (the speaker’s connection with the audience), pathos (emotion), and logos (the argument itself) – and did so two and a half thousand years ago. I find that just thrilling.
One of the seminal works of Western philosophy, Aristotle's Rhetoric vastly influenced all subsequent thought on the subject — philosophical, political, and literary. Focusing on the use of language as both a vehicle and a tool to shape persuasive argument, Aristotle delineates with remarkable insight both practical and aesthetic elements and their proper combination in an effective presentation, oral or written. He also emphasizes the role of language in achieving precision and clarity of thought. The ancients regarded rhetoric as the crowning intellectual discipline — the synthesis of logical principles and other knowledge attained from years of schooling. Modern readers…
Don’t be put off by the dry-sounding title. This book is the authoritative A-Z reference on the “flowers of rhetoric”: all the “figures” and “tropes”, or twists and turns of language that make it beautiful, memorable – and persuasive.
But it’s more than just a geek-heaven cabinet of curiosities: it’s full of history and philosophy, of wisdom and humour. I know of no other scholarly reference book that brings more joy and amusement.
With a unique combination of alphabetical and descriptive lists, "A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms" provides in one convenient, accessible volume all the rhetorical terms - mostly Greek and Latin - that students of Western literature and rhetoric are likely to come across in their reading or will find useful in their writing. The Second Edition of this widely used work offers new features that will make it even more useful: a completely revised alphabetical listing that defines nearly 1,000 terms used by scholars of formal rhetoric from classical Greece to the present day; a revised system of cross-references between terms;…
Philip Collins was a speechwriter in Tony Blair’s New Labour government in the UK, and in this book he looks at 25 great speeches through history and picks them apart to show what they were trying to do and how they did it.
It’s very approachable, and full of insider knowledge, anecdotal nuggets, and a craftsman’s insight into speechwriting tricks – as well as mounting a firm and impassioned case for the importance of rhetoric to democracy itself. The jokes are good, too. “Barack Obama may be the best male speaker in living memory,” Collins writes, “and the second-best speaker in his own family.”
'For all those who believe in the politics of principle and hope this a wonderful reminder that they do not always lose. For all those who despair that politics can ever be inspiring again this is a must-read to shake you out of your misery' Paddy Ashdown
'By the people, for the people'
'I have the heart and stomach of a king'
'We shall never surrender'
The right words at the right time can shape history.
By analysing twenty-five of the greatest speeches ever given - delivered by iconic figures from Elizabeth I to…
The 250-odd words of the Gettysburg Address are some of the most stirring ever spoken.
Garry Wills’s classic study of how Lincoln came to make that speech is a wonderfully rich investigation of their historical context and literary influences, right back to Pericles’s funeral oration. Wills argues that Lincoln’s speech changed America, and changed the way speeches themselves would come to be made.
It shows how so much can go into so apparently little – and what a difference that can make.
The power of words has rarely been given a more compelling demonstration than in the Gettysburg Address. Lincoln was asked to memorialize the gruesome battle. Instead, he gave the whole nation "a new birth of freedom" in the space of a mere 272 words. His entire life and previous training, and his deep political experience went into this, his revolutionary masterpiece.
By examining both the address and Lincoln in their historical moment and cultural frame, Wills breathes new life into words we thought we knew, and reveals much about a president so mythologized but often misunderstood. Wills shows how Lincoln…
This 1644 book is one of the most charmingly mad documents in the history of rhetoric.
Bulwer thought (rightly) that rhetoric wasn’t just about words: body-language matters, too. So he attempted to catalogue the meaning of hand gestures, which he believed were a universal language, and to explain how best they might be used in oratory.
You discover, if you read Bulwer, that we’ve been blowing kisses and flipping the bird since the seventeenth century; and that clapping your hands as you talk is “a gesture too plebeian and theatrically light for the hands of any prudent rhetorician”. Better yet, the book Is abundantly illustrated with woodcuts.
It’s a tragedy that Bulwer died before producing the planned sequel, Cephalelogia…Cephalenomia, on gestures of the head.
Bulwer’s Chirologia… Chironomia is an extremely rare work. Only thirty-one copies have been located, and they are of dubious legibility of the printed text.
This first modern edition—the first in three centuries—is based on the first printing as sold by Richard Whitaker in 1644. Spelling and punctuation have been modernized, but changes in punctuation and syntax have been conservative. Translations for Greek and Latin passages have been provided, either in the text or notes. And copious notes have been furnished to clarify and dilate all textual obscurities and alterations.
The editors aims, therefore, have been, first, to provide a clear…
My book is an attempt to demystify the study of rhetoric – explaining how people have thought about the art of persuasion from Aristotle right up to the present day. I explain the classical teachings about oratory – which can still be recognised in every modern book on public speaking – and ground them in real-world examples from Martin Luther King to Colonel Jessup in A Few Good Men. I think my happiest moment writing it was when I realised that Stan Cartman from South Park offers an outstanding lesson in epideictic oratory.
I’m an OB/GYN, passionate about adventuring beyond what’s expected. This has led me to pivot multiple times in my career, now focusing on writing. I’ve written a play, The Post-Roe Monologues, to elevate women’s stories. I cherish the curiosity that drives outer and inner exploration, and I love memoirs that skillfully weave the two. The books on this list feature extraordinary women who took risks, left comfort and safety, and battled vulnerability to step into the unknown. These authors moved beyond the stories they’d believed about themselves–or that others told about them. They invite you to think about living fuller and bigger lives.
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
The team attempts a new route up the East Face without the use of supplemental oxygen, Sherpa support, or chance for rescue. When three climbers disappear during their summit attempt, Zieman reaches the knife edge of her limits and digs deeply to fight for the climbers’ lives and to find her voice.
The plan was outrageous: A small team of four climbers would attempt a new route on the East Face of Mt. Everest, considered the most remote and dangerous side of the mountain, which had only been successfully climbed once before. Unlike the first large team, Mimi Zieman and her team would climb without using supplemental oxygen or porter support. While the unpredictable weather and high altitude of 29,035 feet make climbing Everest perilous in any condition, attempting a new route, with no idea of what obstacles lay ahead, was especially audacious. Team members were expected to push themselves to their…
