The Greatest Speeches of All Time

Assembling such a collection is always difficult because there are so many choices available. I can understand the emphasis on history/politics because that's where most of the material is available.

BTW, Chief Seattle's speech was ghost-written in 1971, nearly a century after he died.

Should have been titled "The most historical speeches". Many of them had great historical significance, but were not very moving as speeches.

Also many are narrated. Some of the narrators use good delivery - however others read like they are narrating a non fiction book. Much of a speech is the delivery, and the delivery is COMPLETELY lost on many if not most of the narrated ones.

The title of this should THE GREATEST HISTORY OF OLD TIMES. Great speech compilation but not the greatest of all times. A little bit disappointed. I was surprised that Niel Amstrong was in this compilation which I hardly understand what he was saying while in the outerspace. Moreover, I find it odd that Bill Clinton's convocation speech made it as the greatest speech of all times (**shrugs**).

Many of these speeches will be familiar to the listener. However, some of the most interesting ones for me were the speeches I had never even heard about, such as the one given by the first female in the British Parliment.

Also, the Washington speeches are very timely (or perhaps they are so timeless that they will always seem timely).

This is a real bargain if you are interested in public speaking. What is necessary for this particular title more than others is a list of speeches indexed by playing time, so that you can go directly to a particular speech...

This was a real disappointment. A few, I repeat few, words from some great people. a sad sack speech from Jimmy Carter. Not recommended.

The selection and editing of these speeches were sometimes disappointing. Some clearly great historical speeches are included -- but I was too frequently baffled by the inclusion of marginal speeches from "left-of-center" political figures. Why do we hear an extended, tiresome speech by Carter on energy policy, yet only a snippet from Reagan's compelling speech on the Cold War several years later? Why so much Clinton, Roosevelt, Lenin, and Robespierre? Also, there is a decidedly American bent to this that may disappoint listeners from other parts of the world.

Likes:
Most people are not aware of the great leaders of history! If more people listened to the inspiring speeches from great leaders such as Churchill, Kennedy and Martin Luther and M.L.King, and read some history; they would not stand for the double speaking, spineless, self serving, and quisling like, empty suit politicians in the house and senate that keep getting re-elected!

Dislikes:
To include Jimmy Carter hopeless speech and a 10 self indulgent fluff speech by Bill Clinton, is utterly laughable, in the light of the giants, while not including the actual speech by Ronald Reagan's "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." Instead, the CD has a two-minute segment from an American TV address in which he tells of seeing the Berlin Wall.

The one thing it shows is the political leanings of the people that put this audio book collection together....

This Audiobook included a great selection of history's best speeches, many of which took place before actual recordings could be made. Obviously, an actor was chosen to read these unrecorded speeches. While many of these speeches were read masterfully (the reading of "The Wrath of God") some of them were not. In fact, the reading of George Washington's Inaugural Address was difficult to follow due to lengthy, deep breaths that broke many sentences. I do not think that George Washington exercised extensively before his address, but apparently this interpretation disagrees.

Despite this, the collection is interesting and inspiring. The content and most of the readings deserve five stars.

The editor occasionally gets lucky with a great speach, but for the most part this collection is very poorly chosen. It does not come even remotely close to living up to the title. Many great speaches which do not agree with the editor's bias are severely abbridged while other selections of very dubious quality are allowed to drone on at length.