"Journalist, speaker, and early civil rights leader Ida B. Wells was one of the most outspoken and famous women in the United States. Her powerful speeches on the injustices of lynching in America meant she was subjected to threats on her own life. Her 1909 speech to the newly formed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) addresses the social and political circumstances that led to lynching. Her fact-based analysis dispels...

Traces the life of Lou Gehrig, famous baseball Hall of Fame player who played in 2130 consecutive games before falling at age 37 to ALS, a deadly nerve disease which now bears his name. Gehrig is followed from his athletic childhood in New York to his famous 'Luckiest Man' speech at his farewell day in 1939.

Drawing on interviews with Reagan administration officials, journalists, historians, and eyewitnesses, the author focuses on Ronald Reagan's June 1987 speech at the Brandenburg Gate and his historic challenge to Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.

"I have a dream." When those words were spoken on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, the crowd stood, electrified, as Martin Luther King, Jr. brought the plight of African Americans to the public consciousness and firmly established himself as one of the greatest orators of all time. Behind the Dream is a thrilling, behind-the-scenes account of the weeks leading up to the great event, as told by Clarence Jones, co-writer of the...

"An expert analysis of Abraham Lincoln's three most powerful speeches reveals his rhetorical genius and his thoughts on our national character. Abraham Lincoln, our greatest president, believed that our national character was defined by three key moments: the writing of the Constitution, our declaration of independence from England, and the beginning of slavery on the North American continent. His thoughts on these landmarks can be traced through...