SchlagerBlog

The BBC Web site has a terrific article about Obama’s oratorical skill. It features interviews with various historians, political scientists, and scholars of rhetoric. Among the speeches it highlights are his speech on race, his speech at the Democratic National Convention, and his victory speech on election night. In addition, the article talks about some of the past leaders that Obama clearly echoes in his speeches, including Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr.

I was happy to arrive at the office this morning to discover that our analysis of the Gettysburg Address (written by Carl Rollyson of Baruch College, CUNY) is #1 on Amazon.com’s bestseller list in the history category for e-documents. It’s fitting, since today is the 145th anniversary of the address. Over at the Milestone Documents Blog, where the Gettysburg Address is the Doc of the Day, you can learn that the address took Lincoln only two minutes to deliver (not a surprise, given that it’s only about 278 words in length). Doris Kearns Goodwin, in Team of Rivals (suddenly all over the cultural and political landscape), recounts how the crowd sat in stunned silence when Lincoln finished the speech, bewildered at its brevity, before applauding. The speech is “now considered the most eloquent ever delivered by an American president,” notes Rollyson in his analysis.