In Our Own Words: Extraordinary Speeches of the American Century - Hardcover

Torricelli and Carroll's working definition of what constitutes a speech is broad, and arguably so. It encompasses not only such fine moments of public rhetoric as Notre Dame president Charles O'Donnell's eulogy to football coach Knute Rockne and Dwight Eisenhower's warning about the growing power of what he called the "military-industrial complex," but also actress Jane Fonda's wartime radio broadcasts from Hanoi and Frank Zappa's congressional testimony against proposed measures to initiate a national rating system for recorded music--not exactly speeches, a purist might object, but still useful primary sources for students of the recent past.

A practiced speechmaker himself, Torricelli brings in the voices not only of legislators and politicians, but also of ordinary people moved to heights of eloquence. The result is an eminently readable collection spanning the last hundred years, useful to students of history and of public discourse. --Gregory McNamee

* Let's begin with the falsehoods. The anonymous Kirkus reviewer states, as evidence of our supposed liberal slant, that the speeches concerning the Vietnam War are three-to-one against. Wrong. It's evenly split, four to four. (Not a big deal, I concede, but the record should be set straight. More important, it's indicative of a larger bias on the reviewer's part.)

* Second, I cannot for the life of me understand why the reviewer said that the only Republicans we featured ("from Goldwater to Nixon and Agnew") are demonized. We credited Goldwater with launching the modern conservative movement, and I personally consider his address to the 1964 Republican National Convention to be one of the most dynamic and passionate speeches in the book. We hailed Republican Senator Margaret Chase Smith for boldly standing up to those who trampled on the Constitution for political gain during the Red Scare of the 1950s. We included several extraordinary speeches by Ronald Reagan and even used his address before the Berlin Wall as the epigraph for the entire 1980s chapter. (There are also first-rate speeches by Charlton Heston, IKE, Theodore Roosevelt, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Clarence Thomas, Phyllis Schlafly, and many other influential conservatives.) As to Nixon and Agnew, I fear our reviewer is projecting history's judgments-not ours-on these two men. We simply state the facts in their respective headnotes, as we do with everyone else. There is no escaping that President Nixon resigned in the face of impeachment and Vice President Agnew was put on probation for tax evasion as well as for accepting payoffs.

* It is also curious that the Kirkus reviewer suggests, despite the fact there are no comments in the book to indicate a preference on our part, that when we include someone like Jane Fonda making pro-Communist statements (which I personally found to be repulsive) we are therefore endorsing her views, but when we include a more conservative voice we are therefore "demonizing" it. Was Jimmy Carter demonized because we included the "malaise" speech he gave to a nation mired in high inflation, unemployment, and long gas lines? (All of which we emphasized.) The headnotes for other speeches by Democrats are equally as blunt, but the Kirkus reviewer mysteriously disregards this.

* To go on to say "there's a plurality of voices for progressive, liberal, and anarchist causes" is also simply untrue. Yes, there are many liberal voices in the collection, and there is one speech by Emma Goldman, an avowed anarchist. But the great majority of the book's speeches would be considered by sensible people to be patriotic and pro-democracy. And even the speeches that are often labelled as more "progressive" in nature, like Cesar Chavez's or Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous orations, appeal to the underlying principles of this country-free speech, freedom of assembly, and justice for all. I would hope that such ideals transcend political associations.

* It is also a pity the Kirkus reviewer focuses primarily on the political aspect of the book, as so many of the speeches in the collection are by sports legends (Lou Gehrig, Jackie Robinson, and Vince Lombardi), religious leaders (Billy Graham, Eli Wiesel, among many others), poets and writers (Carl Sandburg, William Faulkner, Jack Kerouac, and Rachel Carson), musicians (Duke Ellington and Frank Zappa), great military leaders (Patton and MacArthur), and so many other Americans from all walks of life.

* What struck me the most about the Kirkus review, however, was the almost offhanded dismissal of the speeches by "supporters of social spending, prison reform, abortion, [sic] AIDS victims, drug addicts." To lump them together, which Kirkus does, as "sundry politically correct minorities" is sloppy reviewing at best, and offensive at worst. These individuals, as anyone who has actually read the book can attest, represent a diverse spectrum of voices and ideas. If there is one similarity, it is that they all express themselves with great power and poignancy. Ryan White was only a teenager when he spoke in humble but heartbreaking detail before a presidential AIDS committee about the daily humiliations he faced because he had contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion. When Patricia Godley stood up at a town meeting (broadcast live by Nightline) and talked, without notes, about the pain of losing her son to drugs and her own addiction, the audience was mesmerized by the passion of her delivery and the struggles she had overcome. She spoke movingly of the need for society to treat all people-including drug addicts-with compassion and respect, but she also spoke of personal responsibility. Ultimately, I believe that featuring ordinary Americans who faced extraordinary circumstances with courage and dignity demonstrates both the perserverance of the human spirit and the power of words to educate and inspire us all. Looking over the Kirkus review again, I think I know what happened, and it is not entirely the reviewer's fault. I can only imagine how many hundreds (thousands?) of books come pouring into Kirkus' offices each week. Overwhelmed by this onslaught, our reviewer must have breathed a sigh of relief upon seeing Senator Torricelli's name on the cover of "IN OUR OWN WORDS," figuring it's a safe assumption that any collection of speeches edited by a prominent Democrat must be politically biased. After a brief skim through the table of contents, our overworked reviewer picked out a few examples to buttress his or her pre-conceived notion of the book and quickly tapped out the review. I will be the first to admit it makes for a lively and provocative article. Just not, alas, an accurate one.