by David Zarefsky (Author)

Winner of the Speech Communication's Winans-Wichelns Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Rhetoric and Public Address. Zarefsky examines the dynamics of the seven 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates, placing them in historical context and explaining the complicated issue of slavery in the territories, their focal point. He elucidates the candidates' arguments, analyzes their rhetorical strategies, and shows how public sentiment is transformed.

Back Jacket

'This book is at once an original look at the Lincoln-Douglas debates and a multi-faceted, deeply layered, and nuanced study of how to analyze public rhetorical action historically. It deepens and alters our view of the debates as historical events, it goes beyond existing treatments of the debates as oratorical performances, and it broadens our sense of the ideas contained and argued over in them.' --Donald M. Scott, Eugene Lang College, New School for Social Research

Author Biography

David Zarefsky is dean of the School of Speech and professor of communication studies at Northwestern University.

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