Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History

The definitive compendium of classic and modern oratory expanded―with a new preface on what makes a speech "great."

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.

• The Political Speechwriter's Companion: A Guide for Writers and Speakers
• The World's Great Speeches: Fourth Enlarged (1999) Edition
• Great Speeches of the 20th Century (Dover Thrift Editions)
• On Speaking Well: How to Give a Speech With Style, Substance, and Clarity
• Writer's Guide to Using Eight Methods of Transition: 1st (First) Edition
• The Lost Art of the Great Speech: How to Write One--How to Deliver It
• Speak Like Churchill, Stand Like Lincoln: 21 Powerful Secrets of History's Greatest Speakers
• We Are the Change We Seek: The Speeches of Barack Obama
• Speeches that Changed the World
• 50 Speeches That Made the Modern World: Famous Speeches from Women's Rights to Human Rights