The Art of Public Speaking by Dale Carnegie

Though this book was first published in 1915, you could certainly make the case that public speaking as a skill is more valuable than ever.

We participate in conversations with friends and strangers, often trying to convince them of our point of view. We give presentations to co-workers and colleagues and students, often fussing over which details are too important to leave out. Content creators and influencers and podcasters spend many hours talking and speaking and delivering speeches, and some of them even make a lot of money doing it.

We may all have our noses in our devices pretty often throughout the day, but that just makes learning how to speak in such a way that commands respect and attention that much more important. If you’re looking for a way to improve your own public speaking skills, then The Art of Public Speaking contains ideas and practice prompts that can help improve your conversational and presentation abilities.

However, a lot of this stuff is boring and dry. While there is certainly good advice and how-tos in this text, and many of the speeches would certainly make very good practice for anyone who wishes to better their public speaking skills, you most certainly do not need to memorize and deliver all the many many pages of Julius Ceasar this text contains in order for you to get good at it. 

The Questions and Exercises often do not have questions at all. They will instruct you to memorize entire poems and create diagrams about conversations you’ve heard and practice speeches and write your own speeches and even go to the library to look up more boring speeches. Between all the work that this book tells you to do and all the time it would take to do it, you may as well go to law school or medical school for all the effort you’ll have to put into it.

Many (maybe even almost all!) of the themes are very dated and not very relevant to today. There are tons of speeches by long-forgotten and never-heard-of-him figures who were much more well-known when this book was published over a hundred years ago, like William Jennings Bryan, the Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson. And Daniel Webster, who was the Secretary of State under both Millard Filmore and William Henry Harrison. And Albert J. Beveridge, who was the Senator of Indiana in the early 20th century. And 19th century journalist Henry W. Grady, whose racist views have been so problematic that his name has been removed from several schools.

And speaking of problematic views, there is more in addition to Grady, like how “Saxon words are usually more forceful than Latinistic words,” and at least one speech mourning the Confederacy. One suggested debate topic is “Is Eugenics a science? And is it practicable?” There’s lots of crazy stuff in here.

Like pretty much any work that is more than a century old, The Art of Public Speaking shows its era. There are lots of assumptions and rhetorical examples that will make modern readers cringe. The book’s value, though, is how it attempts to understand how humans communicate, and being confidence, prepared, authentic, and thoughtful, are all attributes that go into being a commanding public speaker. We have evolved and the tools we use to communicate have evolved, but connecting with others through convincing words has not changed.

Click on the book to buy The Art of Public Speaking!

Cover Image Credit: Background cover image is by Ekta Parishad via Wikimedia Commons. The original cover image of the microphone is by Tobias C. Wahl via Pixabay and used with permission.

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