Mastering Public Speaking, Fifth Edition

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I'd considered buying this book from Amazon, and decided to first examine a copy at the Boston Public Library. I was unimpressed. The tone seems aimed at middle-school students, and the text is littered with patronizing "Dick & Jane" anecdotes. A quick glance through the table of contents suggests that Grice and Skinner address nearly every conceivable aspect of public speaking -- but a closer examination reveals a complete lack of depth. It seems as if they simply brainstormed ways to add pages without actually investigating their subject.

The most derelict example I found was the second chapter, devoted entirely to a discussion of ethics. This chapter includes a section on plagiarism, where Grice and Skinner define plagiarism and warn students that getting caught may result in failing a class or being expelled from school -- hardly the sort of information you'd expect from a college-level textbook. Meanwhile, Grice and Skinner lazily sidestep the most challenging issue -- the employment of speechwriters -- by confining its mention to a brief, rhetorical question among the chapter-end exercises. In other words: "Here's a complex issue. We've exhausted our space with rudimentary ones, but we encourage you to do some real work on your own!"

There are some informative, useful books on public speaking. Richard Dowis and James Humes have each written excellent books on crafting and delivering a speech. Virgil Anderson and Ann Utterback have written valuable books on training your voice, and Livingston Taylor and Keith Johnstone have written classics on stage performance. My suggestion is to skip this book. I was thoroughly disappointed with its lack of ambition, and I'd hate to be stuck with a professor who found it respectable.