"An entertaining history of great oratory" and a primer to rhetoric's key techniques (The New Yorker).
Rhetoric gives our words the power to inspire. But it's not just for politicians: it's all around us, whether you're buttering up a key client or persuading your children to eat their vegetables. You have been using rhetoric yourself, all your life. After all, you know what a rhetorical question is, don't you?
In Words Like Loaded Pistols, Sam Leith traces the art of argument from ancient Greece down to its many modern mutations. He introduces verbal villains from Hitler to Richard Nixon-and the three musketeers: ethos, pathos and logos. He explains how rhetoric works in speeches from Cicero to Obama, and pays tribute to the rhetorical brilliance of AC/DC's "Back In Black". Before you know it, you'll be confident in chiasmus and proud of your panegyrics- because rhetoric is useful, relevant, and absolutely nothing to be afraid of. Sam Leith is the Literary Editor of The Spectator whose work has appeared in the Times, the Guardian, the TLS, and the New York Times, among other outlets. He is the author of several books, including Write To The Point: How To Be Clear, Correct, and Persuasive on the Page. He lives in London.
"Delightful and illuminating.... Words Like Loaded Pistols sports a fabulous assortment of examples of time-tested rhetorical gambits in action.... The marvel is not that the old techniques still work, but that we ever persuaded ourselves that we could do without them."-Salon "Leith
brings to life a forgotten but eternally essential subject.... Leith uses every
tool in the rhetorician's arsenal to argue for rhetoric's continuing relevance....
Readers will gain a great deal of insight into how humans use communication to
get what they want...the book fulfills Cicero's three objectives of rhetoric:
'to move, educate, and delight.'"-Kirkus Reviews "Timed
for a presidential election year, this sassy, smart book outlines and
illustrates nearly every rhetorical trope and flourish related to the art of
persuasion.... Leith can be fiendishly entertaining."-Publishers Weekly
