About book Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches In History (2015)
Writing a review of this book takes some courage, for this is a book coauthored by hundreds of remarkable characters throughout the human history.I first borrowed this book from one of NYU’s libraries because I needed to write political speeches for a science fiction. It soon became clear that this is not a book that can be skimmed through in a few days. Not a beach read or a diversion you bring to an airplane. It desires a slot on my bookshelf and is well worth the $35 I spent on Amazon. There are more than 200 speeches presented in 14 categories, ranging from Napoleon’s exhortation to his soldiers to Clinton’s memorial of Martin Luther King. My favorite is the category of War and Revolution, as “The better work men do is always done under stress and at great personal cost” (William Carlos Williams), although I do learn a lot in any of the other categories, about economy, democracy, religion, etc.But this is more than a collection. Preceding every speech, the author, William Safire, gives a brief background of the speech and the speaker. For historical events, you may argue that anyone could easily “google” something out, but the intros written by Safire are not mere facts; they are the distillate of abundant knowledge combined with personal insights. I’ve tried reading some of the speeches without first resorting to Safire’s intros. Always ended up clueless. Some of the events awoke my old memories. When I learned those events in high school, they were numbers and names and exam questions. Now reading the actual speech, I become face to face with the speaker, fearing his fear and smiling at his smile. There is no force stronger than the mind of a remarkable human being. And that’s how people achieve eternity --- “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about.” (Benjamin Franklin)
Good book, but somewhat Eurocentric -- which may reflect the editor's greater familiarity with Western history and historical figures. Also, a surprising amount of recent (late 20th century) material. This was disappointing. While the modern population is much larger than in earlier times -- and there might therefore be more momentous speeches nowadays than in earlier ages -- one gets the impression that this has been a Golden Age of Oratory.I'd be curious whether the next edition of the book includes, say, George Galloway's blistering testimony before the US Senate in in 2005, or Steve Jobs' unveiling of the iPhone. While neither might have geopolitical importance, the former is an astonishing display of rhetorical prowess, and the latter is probably considered the crowning achievement of Steve Jobs' career -- both as a tech CEO and as a marketer.
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This is a fantastic collection of speeches, and Safire provides just the right amount of context to allow them to be read with the same gravitas as they had when they were first given. He also points the reader towards what he believes are things to be noted about each speech, which is very helpful for the aspiring speechwriter or even the interested layman, without getting in the way of the original writing. I would definitely recommend this collection to anyone with an interest in rhetoric, history, or law(I found the court arguments, in particular, very intriguing).
—Liza
That these speeches were selected based on political correctness seems highly unlikely. Safire was a conservative and one of Reagan's speechwriters, Peggy Noonan, gives a blurb on the back cover. It has two of Reagan's speeches in it.
—Heather Denigan
It is good to be used as a primary source for a rhetoric class. On page 391, it dates back to 1954 when Democrat James Wright went to Fort Worth, Texas. He was a lieutenant till 1987 when he was the Speaker of the Hous.
—James B.
