An introduction to style and rhetoric (the art of persuasion) in American literature and oratory. The core of this book consists of catalogues of terms from stylistics, rhetoric, and Speech Communication (oratory), with examples illustrating the various devices taken almost exclusively from American sources--novels, plays, poetry, nonfiction, television programs. This book is essential reading for academics and nonacademics interested in U.S. culture, history, literary history, literature, and oratory--but it will be valued by anyone, scholarly or otherwise, who simply loves language and the amazing things it can be made to do in the hands of great writers and skilled persuaders. The catalogues, which often provide lively and informative mini-essays, cover the span of U.S. literary history from the early Puritans to Barack Obama, from the seventeenth century to the twenty-first, from high-brow sources (literary and oratorical masterpieces) to popular culture.