A comprehensive, empowering set of strategies for improving public speaking.
A guide to public speaking in the legal world.
Read starts by acknowledging that just about everyone ranks public speaking as their top fear—above death! He hopes his book will help his readers face and overcome their fear of public speaking, and to that end, he emphasizes the “Rule of Three,” which is “the idea that you will have the most success if you try to persuade your judge or jury with three points.” He stresses throughout that public speakers must avoid mimicry in favor of finding their own voice, and the way to do this is to stick to sincerity—not a word most readers will readily associate with lawyers. His manual comprises three segments: how to persuade, how to organize a presentation, and, finally, a historical section on how great masters of persuasion conducted their cases. At the core of his own presentation is a section on “the seven principles of public speaking,” which includes tips like keeping a journal, speaking from the heart, and addressing the audience. In fact, he believes considering the audience is paramount: “The truth is that your next appearance in court is about the needs of the judge or jury that you are trying to persuade,” Read writes. “Figuring out those desires first, not your client’s or your own, is the key to success.” In all of this, Read exhibits two main strengths: He’s a very engaging writer, and his book is full of well-chosen quotes from a wide variety of writers and public speakers (“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken”—Oscar Wilde). He buttresses these quotes with his own clearly phrased insights (“Never have a argument but instead have a conversation with the judge and deliver a visual presentation to the jury”). Public speakers of all kinds—and especially courtroom lawyers—will find this book invaluable.
A comprehensive, empowering set of strategies for improving public speaking.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2021
ISBN: 979-8-9851152-1-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Westway Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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