American Rhetoric: The Power of Oratory in the United States

The power of the spoken word, especially when well-delivered and articulated, is immense; this archive of speeches and rhetoric, developed and maintained by Michael E. Eidenmuller, (an assistant professor of communications at the University of Texas at Tyler) is an excellent way to delve into the subject. The core of the site is a truly comprehensive online speech bank that contains over five thousand speeches (in a host of formats), along with other recorded media events. The links in the speech bank are arranged alphabetically by first name and are checked for errors at least once every two weeks. One particularly compelling feature of the site is an area devoted to the rhetoric of 9/11, which contains over 150 active links to speeches dealing with the events on and around that date.