Thank You for Arguing renders the principles of argument clearly and simply — and keeps us laughing all the way. It’s like a complete course on the art of argument, taught by the funniest, most knowledgeable professor you ever had. You’ll find a whole chapter devoted to figures of speech and how to use them.
The Best Books on Rhetoric
-
-
As Strunk & White’s Elements of Style did for grammar, Lanham’s well-organized and entertaining Handlist does for rhetoric. If you lack room on the shelf near your desk, toss Strunk & White and keep the Handlist. You’ll find it infinitely more useful.
-
Worth perusing in any library clever enough to order it. It has a wealth of articles covering all aspects of ancient and modern rhetoric, and everything in between. The material on Shakespeare’s rhetoric is first-rate.
-
The only thorough modern textbook extant. It suffers from the academic distaste for anything practical — Corbett wrote the book for composition students, and you will find little about rhetorical “delivery” or actual argument — but he dutifully leads you through the basic rhetorical principles.
-
This is the rhetoric book that launched all the others, and it remains the art’s fundamental textbook. Whenever I go back and re-read passages that make no sense or seem irrelevant to modern life, I discover that the fault is mine, not Aristotle’s. This book was his masterpiece, written late in life as a culmination of all his political and psychological knowledge. The bad news is, you will not find it a page turner. Some scholars think that Aristotle’s Rhetoric is merely a collection of his lecture notes, and that’s how they read. But if you make the effort, you will uncover a truly uncanny work, one of the genuine classics.
-
Actually Cicero probably didn’t write this seminal work on rhetoric, but it follows his teachings closely. Ad Herrennium (it simply means “For Herrennium,” a dedication) was the standard textbook on the art right up through Shakespeare’s time. The Bard undoubtedly studied it himself.
-
This brilliant, dense book is only for the rhetoric addict. Burke ranks as one of the leading philosophers and literary critics of the twentieth century. It is no exaggeration to call him the greatest rhetorical theorist since Augustine. But the book is slow going for the uninitiated. -
Rhetoric influenced the Founders more than any other discipline. They practically channeled Cicero, and believed their budding republic would succeed where Athens and Rome failed. Richard’s short, readable romp through the founders’ education shows their passion for the ancients better than any other book. -
History’s greatest orator wouldn’t make a very good motion picture. At least, you would never see Russell Crowe playing him. For one thing, Cicero was a physical coward. His name meant “turnipseed” in Latin. And he failed to stop tyranny in Rome. But he was a central actor in some of the most interesting historical events of all time. Everitt has written the most readable biography. He evokes the troubled times in Rome with novelistic flair, and helps us understand why the Romans considered rhetoric the highest of the liberal arts.
Click to View on Amazon