Former comedy club host, online philosophy professor, and keynote speaker, Dr. Matt Deaton, demystifies public speaking as nothing more than idea transfer. His ambitiously titled The Best Public Speaking Book covers everything from preparation to posture, microphones to mindset, hand gestures to hecklers. And Deaton does it with such endearing levity that you forget you're learning to do something scarier than dying (according to Seinfeld).
The core is captured by his Three Commandments:
I. Know Thy Material
II. Be Thyself
III. Practice
Study your subject, polish your authentic stage self, and rehearse, and you're more than halfway there. To get the rest of the way there's:
- The Urban Honey Badger (honored on the book's cover) - an unconventional assertiveness drill designed to vanquish nervousness and build a confident (and slightly edgy) stage presence
- How to develop a message that's easy for you to deliver and for your audience to absorb (when points logically flow, everyone wins)
- How to tailor your silent message to win your audience's respect and attention
- How to quickly recover when things go wrong (Blackout? Fire? No problem!)
- Growth assignments that take readers from the easiest of the easy (Checkout Speech is literally practicing your delivery in line at the grocery), through a library volunteer assignment (the audience is little kids, so the pressure's low - brilliant way to safely build experience), all the way through readers' original reason for studying public speaking (whether for school, work, or the prison talent show)
- How to effectively use PowerPoint (hint: visuals > text), present to a remote audience (assume they're watching Netflix... on the potty), select a quality clicker (hint: range > lasers)
- All the classic essentials, too: enunciation ("Rubber baby buggy bumpers..."), voice projection, eye contact (for audience members without face tattoos, anyway), when (and when not) to use a lectern, why reading a script is the lowest form of public speaking (good news: follow Deaton's Three Commandments and you won't need a script).
Add a humble professor's touch - coaching, encouragement and inspiration (something Deaton admits needing lots of when he began), and you've got one heck of an engaging and effective book. Readers might also accidentally learn to overcome procrastination, transcend perfectionism, supplant negativity with optimism, grow from setbacks, and other corny self-help gems that happen to work.
New in this revised second edition is a chapter on how to handle tough crowds, another on the speaking business (don't rule out getting paid to speak, argues Deaton - if it could happen to him, it can happen to you), chapters on each of his Three Commandments (surprisingly absent in the first edition), and a new YouTuber stretch assignment with an invitation to share a vid for friendly feedback.
Read the reviews. Browse inside. See for yourself why this 2nd edition of Deaton's inviting how-to just might be the best public speaking book. But know that he expects application. If you're not up for reminders to stop reading and start doing, there are less demanding options available. This one isn't for spectators. It's for ambitious rookies with a seed of courage and the commitment to get better--the only two traits, argues Deaton, aspiring speakers need to succeed.
