3 out of 5 stars. This is a book about rhetoric with a capital R. Rhetoric, technically, is the use of the spoken word in order to persuade an audience or audiences. Importantly, rhetoric is not simply the art of persuasive writing on the page. It also involves the style and manner of effective memorization and oral delivery.
Leith loves all the Greek and Latin terminology for rhetorical figures of speech. He is a weaver of words, a smith of sentences, and a parader of paragraphs. (That is a rising tricolon with an auxesis. Read the book to find out more about these terms :-))
The best parts of the book are the rhetorical analysis of famous speeches. The analysis of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is excellent. Less helpful are the chapters about the technical aspects of rhetoric going back to Aristotle and Cicero. I found myself think that this book was a missed opportunity to review how rhetoric is different in the Twitter-age. Leith uses many pop culture examples to illustrate Aristotelian rhetorical technique but he does not allow for the fact that technology, political culture, and the very mechanisms of modern democracy have changed how and whether any audience and which audience can be persuaded by even the most talented speaker. Obama, was an incredible orator, but did that oratorical power give him political power on par with Alcibiades or Demosthenes, or Cicero in their day? (That was a erotema ;-)).
Rhetoric is a lost art because leaders have realized that the techniques of that art do not translate into power as they once did. Or at the very least a new art of rhetoric must be used that builds on the old.
