The Story of the Subversive Speechwriter
Review of: Edgar Julius Jung, Right-Wing Enemy of the Nazis by Roshan Magub (published 2017, 297 pages, Boydell and Brewer) This year marks the 91st anniversary of the execution by a Nazi hit …
A Timely Guide to Preparing and Delivering ‘Do-Good’ Speeches
Review of: Speaking on Climate: A Guide to Speechwriting for a Better Future by Rune Kier Nielsen (204 pages, published April 2025) In his comprehensive collection of life advice addressed to his son …
From ‘Word Donkey’ to ‘Fireman’: A Speechwriter’s Life
Review of: Behind Closed Doors: In the Room with Reagan & Nixon by Ken Khachigian (Post Hill Press, 496 pages, published July 2024) In his magisterial memoir, former White House speechwriter and …
The Purpose of the Inaugural Ritual
Review of: The First Inauguration: George Washington and the Invention of the Republic by Stephen Howard Browne, (Penn State University Press, 2020). On April 30, 1789, General George Washington took his oath of …
A Book 800 Years in the Making
“There are lots of books about speechwriting—but this is the first one in 800 years about how to write a parliamentary speech,” reads a line in the publicity material issued …
Speechwriting, for Ill
Review of Unmasking the Klansman: The Double Life of Asa and Forrest Carter, by Dan T. Carter. Athens GA: NewSouth Books, 2023. Sunday marked the fifty-first anniversary of the most famous and …
Women’s Speech Anthology: Absurdly Late, But Worth the Wait
The first inkling that alighted on this male brain that women’s speeches had been hideously overlooked by innumerable speech anthologies over the decades and the centuries, came a couple of …
Yes, the world needs one more book on rhetoric
I don’t like books on rhetoric, generally. There are too damned many of them, for one thing. University of Richmond rhetoric prof Jerry Tarver donated his collection of “Elocution, Rhetoric …
A Rare Memoir from a Corporate Speechwriter
Review of Cross Bronx: A Writing Lifeby Peter Quinn (Fordham Press; 2022; 256 pages) Peter Quinn’s facility with language has helped him build an enviable reputation as a novelist and historian of …
Is This Book the New ‘West Wing’?
On a road trip with my wife last weekend, I listened to former President Obama Chief Speechwriter Cody Keenan’s new memoir, Grace: President Obama and Ten Days in the Battle for …