Go into the fourth level of Baker stacks. You will find stack upon stack of books, many of which have never been opened by a scholar in this century. Some of them will help you understand why the teaching of rhetoric died, as this nation became more writing-oriented. But you can also find, in these same stacks, the reawakening of rhetoric in America. In 1965, P.J. Corbett's Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student caused a revival of the ancient art and its application in surprising ways.
Rhetoric now fuels one of the most exciting branches of modern philosophy.
As a former reporter on Capitol Hill, I had begun my amateur reading of rhetoric to see if there was a means to modern political consensus in America. A leaner government can no longer afford to buy compromise among political opponents. I believe they do. I have a hope, albeit a naive one, that the dust will someday be blown off some of those rhetoric books in the stacks. May there be many readers behind me, scholars far more skilled than I, who can discover it afresh.