The Art of Public Speaking

About this book

How can an ordinary person learn to speak well in public? This practical guide begins with stage fright and how to master it, and then covers the techniques of effective speaking: avoiding monotony, emphasis, changing pitch and pace, the use of pauses, inflection, feeling and enthusiasm, gesture, the training of the voice, and the methods of argument, persuasion, description and narration. Each chapter ends with exercises and passages from famous speeches to practise.

Context and significance

The book, published in 1915, was written by the editor J. Berg Esenwein with Dale Carnegie, then a young teacher of public speaking in New York, who later became world famous with How to Win Friends and Influence People. The great speeches of Lincoln, often used as models, are in The Papers and Writings of Abraham Lincoln.

About the author