Speak Like Churchill, Stand Like Lincoln: 21 Powerful Secrets of History's Greatest Speakers

Speak Like Churchill, Stand Like Lincoln: 21 Powerful Secrets of History's Greatest Speakers

by James C. Humes

Narrated by Norman Dietz

Unabridged — 6 hours, 31 minutes

Speak Like Churchill, Stand Like Lincoln: 21 Powerful Secrets of History's Greatest Speakers

Speak Like Churchill, Stand Like Lincoln: 21 Powerful Secrets of History's Greatest Speakers

by James C. Humes

Narrated by Norman Dietz

Unabridged — 6 hours, 31 minutes

Audiobook (Digital)

$16.99
FREE With a B&N Audiobooks Subscription | Cancel Anytime
$0.00

Free with a B&N Audiobooks Subscription | Cancel Anytime

START FREE TRIAL

Already Subscribed? 

Sign in to Your BN.com Account


Listen on the free Barnes & Noble NOOK app


Related collections and offers

FREE

with a B&N Audiobooks Subscription

Or Pay $16.99

Overview

Ever wish you could captivate your boardroom with the opening line of your presentation, like Winston Churchill in his most memorable speeches? Or want to command attention by looming larger than life before your audience, much like Abraham Lincoln when, standing erect and wearing a top hat, he towered over seven feet? Now, you can master presentation skills, wow your audience, and shoot up the corporate ladder by unlocking the secrets of history's greatest speakers.



Author, historian, and world-renowned speaker James C. Humes-who wrote speeches for five American presidents-shows you how great leaders through the ages used simple yet incredibly effective tricks to speak, persuade, and win throngs of fans and followers. In this book, you'll discover how Napoleon Bonaparte mastered the use of the pregnant pause to grab attention, how Lady Margaret Thatcher punctuated her most serious speeches with the use of subtle props, how Ronald Reagan could win even the most hostile crowd with carefully timed wit, and much, much more.



Whether you're addressing a small nation or a large staff meeting, you'll want to master the tips and tricks in Speak Like Churchill, Stand Like Lincoln.

Editorial Reviews

Forbes

Companies with straightforward business plans, which executives explain clearly to the public, are to be prized. Avoid those that make things complex.

Sir Winston Churchill said: "A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." I'm fa-natical about brevity. In his new book, Speak Like Churchill, Stand Like Lincoln (Crown, $14), James Humes describes the techniques of history's most renowned speakers, pointing out that Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address--which might win a poll as the greatest speech ever delivered--made a compelling case for the Civil War in only two minutes.

Some people think complex plans and longer explanations are just better. Aside from wasting precious time, a long, disjointed message is often laden with overstatement and useless information. Brevity is honest. A pointed mes-sage is more compelling, persuasive and certainly more memorable. I trust the short and sharp and am suspicious of the verbose.

Public speaking, architecture and even accessorizing are all better when simple. The same is true for investing. In my experience the companies with the simplest stories are the ones that thrive over the long term. Warren Buffett has famously advised to buy what you know.

I try to avoid stocks with convoluted business strategies as well as chief executives who seek to impress with voluminous reports and long-winded presentations.

I call myself "the patient investor," but we all have our limits. Aside from the accounting fraud and other ethi-cal lapses that later came to light, in its heyday Enron was a bad investment idea. Who could grasp how all those energy trades created profits? Quantum physics is probably moreunderstandable. The same goes for a conglomerate like Tyco. Again, disregard the dubious goings-on under previous management. How can investors wrap their minds around com-panies with hundreds of subsidiaries ranging from undersea cable to fire equipment?

The following companies are artfully succinct in their clear missions, straightforward business models and plainspoken communications:

An old industry play on the new economy, DeVry (16) has built an empire on simplifying the complex. DeVry is one of the U.S.' largest publicly held higher education companies and, as a vendor of technical and business school-ing, it presents a conservative foray into technology for skittish investors. The company has 22 undergraduate DeVry campuses in the U.S. and 2 in Canada. Additionally, it operates the Keller Graduate School of Management, which ac-counts for 20% of DeVry University's 55,961 students.

Also, DeVry's Becker Conviser Professional Review Program provides coursework for professional certifica-tion exams, including the certified public accountant, certified management accountant and chartered financial analyst examinations. With students like theirs you can bet DeVry keeps a clean balance sheet. DeVry sells for 17 times trailing earnings, 19 times forward earnings and at a 33% discount to my $24 estimation of its intrinsic worth.

Park Place Entertainment (8) makes business out of pleasure. The world's largest casino gaming company--it derived its name from the coveted property on the Monopoly board--Park Place operates two dozen resorts in five coun-tries. In Las Vegas the company's prime properties include Caesars Palace, Paris, the Flamingo, Bally's and the Hilton. The company also owns casinos in Atlantic City and abroad.

Cash flows freely at Park Place. In fact, the house took in $299 million in free cash flow (in the sense of net in-come plus depreciation minus capital spending) in the 12 months ended Sept. 30. That's equal to $1 per share. Park Place goes for 19 times trailing earnings and 13 times forward earnings. It, too, is at a 33% discount to my estimate of its intrinsic worth.

Tricon Global Restaurants wanted its name to say it all and thus rechristened itself Yum Brands (23). In sales, Yum is the second-largest fast-food company in the world and is the corporate equivalent of a food court, catering to different tastes by housing multiple restaurant brands under one roof. Yum's chains are KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Long John Silver's and A&W. This simple, diversified strategy is Yum's competitive advantage. Multibranding has helped make the company the fast-food industry's leader in terms of number of locations, with 30,000 restaurants worldwide, and gives it elbow room for further international expansion.

Yum Brands is the cheapest of my recommendations here: 12 times trailing earnings, 11 times forward earn-ings and a 26% discount to its $31 intrinsic value.

John W. Rogers Jr. is chairman and chief executive officer of Chicago-based Ariel Capital Management, Inc., the adviser to the Ariel Mutual Funds. Visit his home page at www.forbes.com/rogers.
—John W. Rogers Jr.

From the Publisher

I love this book. I've followed Humes's lessons for years, and he combines them all into one compact, hard-hitting resource. Get this book on your desk now.”—Chris Matthews, Hardball

JANUARY 2012 - AudioFile

Listening to this book is a little like sitting on an airplane next to a retired president of Toastmasters. Humes, a stalwart of Republican Party speechwriting since the 1960s, knows a lot about making good speeches. Narrator Norman Dietz does an excellent job of conveying Humes’s passion and wisdom. You almost feel the author grabbing your lapel. The lessons are divided into convenient chunks—for example, “The Power Pause.” Together, Humes’s discussion and Dietz’s narration evoke a time when the country club was the center of political life (for Republicans) and gentlemen did not tell off-color jokes when ladies were present. To his credit, Humes treats the writing and delivering of speeches as a craft. His examples of “tearjerkers” are priceless. F.C. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID: 2940170572526
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Publication date: 08/01/2011
Edition description: Unabridged
From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews