History's Great Speeches

Embark on a journey through 2,400 years of history with this definitive collection of 161 of the world’s greatest speeches. Presented chronologically, this master volume spans from the golden age of Athens in 431 BCE to the dawn of a new China in 1926, now complete with seminal speeches from India’s Mohandas Gandhi and China’s Mao Tse-Tung. The collection begins with Demosthenes, whose rhetorical mastery forms the DNA of modern expression. Witness the high point of the Athenian empire with Pericles’ funeral oration and hear the only known speech of Julius Caesar before the Roman senate. Delve into the Roman Civil War, dominated by the rivalry between the revolutionary Cataline and the great statesman Cicero, and feel the power of Mark Antony’s oration over Caesar’s body. After a millennium where rhetoric waned, the art is reborn with Mirandola’s "Oration on the Dignity of Man," firing the starting pistol for the Renaissance. The Reformation erupts with Martin Luther’s barnstorming 95 T