A Speaker's Guidebook: Text and Reference

A Speaker’s Guidebook is the best resource in the classroom, on the job, and in the community. Praised for connecting with students who use and keep it year after year, this tabbed, comb-bound text covers all the topics typically taught in the introductory course and is the easiest-to-use public speaking text available. In every edition, hundreds of instructors have helped us focus on the fundamental challenges of the public speaking classroom. Improving on this tradition, the fifth edition does even more to address these challenges with stronger coverage of overcoming speech anxiety, organizing and outlining, and more. And as the realties of public speaking change, so does A Speaker’s Guidebook; the new edition also focuses on presentational speaking in a digital world — from finding credible sources online to delivering presentations in a variety of mediated formats. Read the preface.

DAN O'HAIR is dean of the University of Kentucky College of Communications and Information Studies. He is past Presidential Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Oklahoma and past president of the National Communication Association. He is co-author or co-editor of fifteen communication texts and scholarly volumes and has published more than eighty research articles and chapters in dozens of communication, psychology and health journals and books. He is a frequent presenter at national and international communication conferences, is on the editorial boards of various journals and has served on numerous committees and task forces for regional and national communication associations. ROB STEWART is senior vice provost and professor of communication studies at Texas Tech University. He is coauthor of A Speaker's Guidebook, Public Speaking: Challenges and Choices and has also published over 30 articles and book chapters. HANNAH RUBENSTEIN is a writer and editor who has used her academic training in communication (M.A., Fairfield University) to guide her collaborations on A Speaker's Guidebook, Public Speaking: Challenges and Choices and other successful college texts. She heads her own communication firm, Hedgehog Productions.