The Penguin Book of Modern Speeches

by Brian MacArthur (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1999

  $3.36

  Some men speak and change the world. Sometimes for better, often for worse. As Hitler rallied the Germans for war, and twenty years later - John Kennedy sounded the bugle for the new frontier, their visions, gilded and articulated by the power of their oratory, stirred men's hearts and summoned nations to action. 'History will absolve me, ' declared Fidel Castro. 'Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country, ' said Kennedy. 'I have a dream, ' announced Martin Luther King. 'It is an ideal for which I am prepared to die, ' said Nelson Mandela. Few who were born during the Second World War and who came of age in the sixties will ever forget Kennedy's rousing exhortations or the cries for justice from King and Castro. Their words gave form to dreams and hope to men and women. There are those who claim that the age of oratory is over, that the ubiquitous 'soundbite' and our neglect of the classics and the Bible have destroyed it. Yet wherever misery and oppression exist, and while men and women uphold ideals, oratory still flourishes. Now, in The Penguin Book of Twentieth-century Speeches, Brian MacArthur has collected the great speeches which shaped this century - from Theodore Roosevelt's call to the 'strenuous life' in 1899 to Lyndon Johnson's summons to the Great Society in 1964; from Lloyd George's 'People's Budget' of 1909 to Geoffrey Howe's thrusting of the dagger into Margaret Thatcher in 1990; from Roger Casement in the dock in 1914 to Salman Rushdie in the dock in 1991; from Emmeline Pankhurst to Betty Friedan; from Mahatma Gandhi to Jawaharlal Nehru; and from Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky to Khrushchev and Solzhenitsyn. There are presidents and prime ministers, soldiers and poets, dreamers and destroyers. The Penguin Book of Twentieth-century Speeches is the perfect source book for those engaged in making speeches themselves, for students and for anyone wishing to read precisely what was said during a half-remembered speech. Yet

• Used

  Paperback
  1993

  $3.36

  For better, for worse, the great public speakers have always had the power to change the world. Brian MacArthur's anthology includes the most famous and notorious speeches delivered in English since 1899 as well as speeches in translation by Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini and Castro among others. From Vaclav Havel to Martin Luther King, and from Hitler winning over the industrialists to Churchill rousing the English, this anthology contains many of the masterpieces that helped shape the 20th Century. This edition has been full revised and new speeches added.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1992

  $3.36