The Penguin Book of Historic Speeches

Brian MacArthur's Penguin Book of Twentieth-Century Speeches was described as 'a compelling read' (Observer) and 'a means of re-creating a turbulent century' (Sunday Times). In this superb companion volume, he brings together the words of over a hundred men and women - from Moses to Mandela - who changed the world through the sheer power of their oratory. Gladstone and Disraeli, or Pitt and Fox before them, forged the politics of their age through ferocious verbal combat in the House of Commons. Abraham Lincoln transformed forever the way Americans interpret the Civil War and their national destiny. Like Cicero or Cromwell, Churchill, Kennedy and Martin Luther King inspired generations with their hopes and dreams; others have given equally eloquent expression to the rights of man, the wrongs of women and the cause of the Irish freedom. The world's most effective speakers, argues MacArthur, have always known how 'to move hearts or inspire great deeds, to uplift spirits or cast down enem