Art of Oratory - Hardcover

The greatest speeches have changed world history. To compile an anthology of them is therefore to sketch a history of the world. From the origins of western oratory in classical Greece (Pericles, Demosthenes), via its exponents in the great age of British Parliamentary debate and American Congressional and Presidential campaigning, through its perverting by the twentieth-century's worst dictators and demagogues, to its exuberant modern practitioners in black America (Martin Luther King, Jesse Jackson) or South Africa (Nelson Mandela), this book is a treasury of golden words launched from silver tongues. Each speech is presented with a portrait of the speaker plus a short biography and an account of the context in which the speech was delivered, including the historical consequences.

The compiler and commentator, Charles Mosley, is an editor, author and journalist of more than thirty years. His book on American Presidents and his profiles of British Prime Ministers for the on-line version of Burke's Peerage & Baronetage, of which he was Editor-in-Chief for fifteen years, fits him supremely well for the task.