Words Like Loaded Pistols: Rhetoric from Aristotle to Obama

Timed for a presidential election year, this sassy, smart book outlines and illustrates nearly every rhetorical trope and flourish related to the art of persuasion. Following precepts gleaned from the masters of this art, Leith can be fiendishly entertaining while he goes against the grain of our age, one in which rhetoric is generally looked upon with the same suspicion that Plato viewed the Sophists: as spin doctors of their day. Modern America’s discomfort with anything but plain style or memorization makes it even more difficult for hopeful practitioners to gain traction in the traditional craft of oral communication. A study of Hitler’s oratory and a priceless analysis of Richard Nixon’s “Checkers Speech” further prove one of the central tenets of this anxiety: “Rhetoric’s effectiveness is, in the final analysis, independent of its moral content or that of its users.” Thus, the lessons of Aristotle, Demosthenes, Cicero, Quintilian, Lincoln, Churchill, Martin Luther King Jr., presidents Obama and Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan, and others, provide the foundation for a potential resurgence of this craft. Agent: George Lucas, Inkwell Management (May)