Graduation Day: The Best of America's Commencement Speeches - Hardcover

Published just in time for graduation day, this inspiring collection of commencement addresses celebrates the value of education, and its crucial place in the weaving of our social fabric. By turns playful and profound, GRADUATION DAY includes speeches from Robert Frost, Ted Turner, James Taylor, Bill Clinton, Ann Richards, Toni Morrison and others. This unique anthology will be well cherished long after graduation day.

An odd idea, well done but with, it would seem, a relatively small audience. The editors have gathered together the transcripts of a number of commencement speeches given at American colleges and universities in the 1980s and '90s by a variety of notables and celebrities (including Dan Rather, Carl Sagan, Mario Cuomo, and Ronald Reagan, among others). A number of the speeches are surprisingly good: funny, frank, even occasionally stirring. Others, sounding both glib and bland, would seem to indicate the homogenizing presence of ghostwriters. The best pieces include Russell Bakers hilarious address offering advice to graduates (Dont go around in clothes that talk. Theres already too much talk in the world); Toni Morrisons powerful meditation on violence and hatred; and Hank Aarons heartfelt discussion of courage. A final section gathers together commencement speeches given over the past century (including addresses by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Winston Churchill, and Martin Luther King Jr.), remind one of how unique and lasting a truly great commencement address can be. Few of the contemporary pieces, affecting as some of them are, reach those heights. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.