Comparative rhetoric : an historical and cross-cultural introduction /

This work promises much but delivers little. Professionals long in the field will have encountered almost all Kennedy offers in their course work during the 1940-60 era; only a few minor updatings are presented. The coverage is unbalanced: Australian Aborigines are considered though the much more rhetorically advanced Maori are not; China is included, but Japan is overlooked. Why? The chapter bibliographies suggest a hurried search for material: S.E. De's Public Speeches in Ancient & Medieval India (rev. ed. 1976) and R.T. Oliver's Leadership in 20th Century Asia (1966) are not mentioned. Many will question the assertion that "human languages developed from animal communication," and few will accept the dictum that 20th-century biblical scholars "rarely showed any awareness of rhetoric until 1969." Is it helpful to declare that rhetoric is just "a form of mental and emotional energy?" Especially weak is the section on Greece and Rome; that on India is hardly less so (there is no allusion to the great Kashmiri "Wings of Speech" painting, for example). Editing is careless. Not recommended. M. B. McLeod; The College of New Jersey