"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." These are some of the most famous, the most quoted, and the best remembered words in American political history. They seem to be a natural expression of American democratic will, yet these words from Franklin Roosevelt's first inaugural address had an actual author who struggled with how best to express that thought-and it wasn't the new president. In this innovative book on the crafting of this crucial speech, Davis W. Houck leads the reader from its negative, mechanical, and Hooverian first draft through its final revision, its delivery, and...

On September 3, 1919, Woodrow Wilson embarked upon one of the most ambitious and controversial speaking tours in the history of American politics: a grueling 8,000-mile, twenty-two-day tour across the Midwest and Far West in support of the League of Nations. Historians still debate Wilson's motivations for touring in the first place, but most agree with Thomas Bailey that the tour proved a disastrous blunder. Not only did Wilson collapse before completing his swing around the circle, but the treaty likely would have been defeated even if the tour had succeeded beyond all expectations. Most...

In his televised and widely watched speech to the nation on November 3, 1969, Pres. Richard M. Nixon introduced a phrase silent majority and a policyVietnamization of the war effortthat echo down to the present day. Nixon s appearance on this night framed the terms in which much of the subsequent civil conflict and military strategy would be understood.
Rhetorical scholar Karlyn Kohrs Campbell analyzes this critically important speech in light of the historical context and its centrality to three other speechestwo earlier and one the following spring, when the announcement of the US...