Rating: 
Summary: Concise and useful
Review: Professor Quinn's slim volume is perhaps the best treatment of the subject of rhetorical devices that I have ever read. I say "best," not because it is the most extensive, nor because it is the most detailed coverage of the subject. I say "best" because I feel it is the most *useful* coverage I have ever encountered.
In concise fashion, Professor Quinn takes the reader through many of the most common figures of speech, tells us the formal names, and provides numerous illustrative examples.
It is true that simply knowing the name given to a particular turn of phrase will not guarantee that one can effectively employ it in one's writing. Nevertheless knowing the
forms and having names to identify them makes it easier to see them in use in the writing of others. By thus making them memorable, they also become a more ready part of one's writing toolkit.
The engaging and entertaining style which Quinn uses throughout the book makes even the most daunting technical terms readily accessible. His well-chosen examples are also entertaining and informative, and most are quite memorable. I can't be certain that merely reading this book will improve every reader's writing, but I believe that most folks will benefit from reading it.
Rating:
Summary: A Toolbox for Talking
Review: Short, easy to read. Full of great examples. Will make you a better speaker and heighten your appreciation of great literature, as well as showing you the techniques used by playwrights, poets, politicians, lawyers, clergy, and all others who earn their bread with their tongues. An eye-opener.
Rating:
Summary: A linguistic bag of tricks
Review: What Strunk & White did for syntax, Arthur Quinn does for rhetoric in this slim delightful book. The 60 figures covered enable sentences to say more than they mean, resonating with the writer's intent. Through examples drawn from sources as diverse as Homer, the Bible, Shakespeare, Romantic poetry and Abraham Lincoln's speeches, Quinn shows that concepts like metonymy and synecdoche, far from being erudite, are pervasive in the best literature. Anyone with an interest in effective writing will enjoy and benefit from this book.
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