A readable analysis of 25 momentous presidential speeches that provides context and understanding of events and history, illustrated with facsimiles of supporting documents, notes, and drafts that together formed the final speech. The book examines the pivotal, often familiar, and potent speeches and addresses of dozens of U.S. presidents to reveal the varied and often conflicting points of view that shaped the final famous words. We see in many...

Historian Ronald White examines Lincoln's astonishing oratory and explores his growth as a leader, a communicator, and a man of deepening spiritual conviction. Examining a different speech, address, or public letter in each chapter, White tracks the evolution of Lincoln's rhetoric from the measured, lawyerly tones of the First Inaugural to the haunting, immortal poetry of the Gettysburg Address. As a speaker who appealed not to intellect alone, but...

Identifies the most crucial texts written by Americans and published in America, which have profoundly shaped the national identity, including the speeches of Lincoln, Kennedy, and Reagan, and the novels of Melville, Salinger, and Rand.