Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History

by WilliamSafire (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1993

  $3.42

  Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, William Safire presents an anthology of the world's greatest speeches throughout the ages. This book features more than 200 addresses by figures from Demosthenes to Salman Rushdie that have moved millions and shaped history. Lend Me Your Ears begins with an introduction that constitutes a crash course in the art of the orator, with an insider's tricks of the trade. Safire's introduction to each speech provides historical background and highlights oratorical tactics.

• New

  Hardcover
  2004

  $46.01

  An instant classic when it was first published a decade ago and now enriched by seventeen new speeches, Lend Me Your Ears contains more than two hundred outstanding moments of oratory. It is selected, arranged, and introduced by William Safire, who honed his skills as a presidential speechwriter. He is considered by many to be America's most influential political columnist and most elegant explicator of our language. Covering speeches from Demosthenes to George W. Bush, this latest edition includes the words of Cromwell to the Rump Parliament, Orson Welles eulogizing Darryl F. Zanuck, General George Patton exhorting his troops before D-Day, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg speaking on Bush v. Gore. A new section incorporates speeches that were never delivered: what Kennedy was scheduled to say in Dallas; what Safire wrote for Nixon if the first moon landing met with disaster; and what Clinton originally planned to say after his grand jury testimony but swapped for a much fiercer speech.