Words Like Loaded Pistols: The Power of Rhetoric from the Iron Age to the Information Age

Praise for Words Like Loaded Pistols: The Power of Rhetoric from the Iron Age to the Information Age

"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

undefined—The London Evening Standard (UK)

"Leith attempts to reclaim rhetoric with a breezy book that sprays

around examples from history, politics and popular culture to outline the

building blocks of public speech, flitting happily from Cicero to J-Lo, from

Hitler to Homer Simpson.... Leith's often engaging examples lighten any sense

of learning."—The Observer (UK)

"It is through a welter of colloquial examples and eccentric line

readings that the book really comes alive.... While the formal study of

rhetoric might have collapsed under its own weight, Leith offers a slimmed-down

version that is sure to enlighten."—The Financial Times (UK)

"A highly entertaining and erudite whisk through the subject

[of rhetoric].... It's not hard to agree that a little rhetorical knowledge is

a wonderful thing, and Leith's work will indeed prove instructive as well as

entertaining to those called on to speak in public."—TheGuardian (UK)

"This requires more than a cursory glance to appreciate its genius

properly, but Leith's great gift is the ability to plunder the everyday to

illustrate the rarefied...He describes the development of rhetoric beautifully,

and even after the most cursory dip into this, you begin to hear the world in a

completely different, illuminated way."—Telegraph (UK)

"Leith is good on tropes and registers and equally good at picking apart speeches - as his subtitle says, From Aristotle to Obama - to show us how they work.... [he] is good, too, on the structure of political speeches."—The Week (UK)

"Elegant, concise and frequently very funny."—Spectator (UK)

"Engrossing.... When it comes to Obama, Leith's scrutiny is painstaking

and he is especially illuminating on Obama's debts to Abraham Lincoln and

Martin Luther King."—Independent (UK)

“This isn’t your parents’ rhetoric primer. . . .Irreverent and funny, Words Like Loaded Pistols is filled with tongue-in-cheek witticisms, slang, and unexpected illustrations. . . . As political rhetoric builds toward November, Leith’s subject will be unavoidable. For the coming months, friends, Buckeyes, countrymen, ready your ears.”—Plain Dealer

“A rambunctious handbook of rhetoric . . . funny, friendly pages.”—Wilson Quarterly

"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