Review: Master a difficult art
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 06 6, 2013
Few people consider themselves to be natural public speakers. Michel Vergotte's book is therefore a great "life hack" to stick out from the crowd. His 52 laws cover everything one could wish to know about presenting and speaking in public; the object is to internalise each law, so that the most awkward public speaker begins to feel, and seem, like a natural. There is nothing wrong with this; as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, "All great speakers were bad speakers at first".Vergotte structures his laws into five chapters: a general introduction, and then four different stages of a typical presentation. These contains a mixture of healthy common sense and non-obvious insight. I would not, for example, have guessed that it is useful to bring small gifts such as a box of chocolates to a presentation. I recommend this book as a comprehensive guide to public speaking, although I also advise prospective readers to seek out videos of excellent public speakers.