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On Speaking Well

On Speaking Well

List Price: $13.00
Your Price: $10.40
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Sage advice from a master speechwriter
Review: Peggy Noonan writes in an engaging style and shares a wealth of good advice about developing a good podium presence and worthwhile content. Many of her points about preparing speeches are practical and extrememely useful (such as how many typed pages translate into 15 or 20 minutes when read out loud). Some of the previous customer reviews bash Ms. Noonan's book for its meandering style and lack of formal structure, but I rather enjoyed the conversational approach. Face it - it reads like a good speech! Any alert reader with a pencil or highlighter will be able to mine the many pearls of wisdom contained within its pages. It is also unfair for some of the previous reviews to bash Noonan's conservative politics. It would be dishonest for Noonan to deny her philosophy when she has made her career by expounding it. Heaven knows there are _plenty_ of books written from a liberal viewpoint. Noonan's book may not be a highly organized textbook, but it contains some of the best advice on speech preparation in print anywhere.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Good but flawed, with better alternatives
Review: Peggy Noonan's book offers good advice on how to approach speechwriting that's often surprising. For someone who wrote the "thousand points of light" speech, she's keen on simplicity, and substance. The how-to-write chapters were interesting and made me consider not just how to approach the topic I was writing a speech for, but how to approach writing it: from finding the core ideas to rehersal, Noonan's got good ideas.

But there's a catch -- Noonan doesn't go a couple pages without tossing off some reference to Clinton/Gore, what awful speakers they were, in their different ways, and by contrast, how great the people she worked with were. It's really annoying, to the point where I wish I hadn't bought it now, because I'm reluctant to go back and re-read sections, knowing the asides that faced me. Sometimes it was fine -- her insight into the purpose behind some of Reagan's speeches was actually intersting, for example -- but frequently it seemed cheap, and I wished she hadn't done it.

I'll give a particularly heinous example: Noonan wants to say that you can break all the rules, and as her example cites a speech by Mother Teresa at a prayer breakfast in which the good Mother goes into a blistering attack on abortion and contraception. Noonan delights in this and particularly in the reaction of Hilary Clinton, who sat and tried to look pleasant.

Now, I'm not a fan of the Clintons, but the whole section is so out-of-place. Hilary's discomfort doesn't illustrate Noonan's point about it being okay to break the rules. That many people were inspired and thought it was great does. There are many examples of unconventional speeches that succeed, and it's Noonan's loss for picking this one.

I've moved on to other books. William Safire's work in particular is excellent reading, and highly recommended. He's also a stalwart conservative, but his writing is both principled and outstanding, without the flaws Noonan's book contains.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Insightful and Well Written
Review: What I loved best about Peggy's book is the delightful conversational style in which she writes which makes for an entertaining "how-to" read. I learned as much about people and history as I did about speech writing. Who says learning has to be dry or boring? A great book to expand a liberal arts education and improve your writing skills.


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