Title: Brevity, Clarity, Plausibilty -versus- Prolixity, Opacity, Implausibility
Product review: Although this book does contain some useful, practical information, it is buried in a forest of non-essential modifiers, unnecessarily obscure polysyllabic terms, and tortured sentence structures. Cicero wrote that the essentials of a rhetorical presentation were brevity, clarity, and plausibility. Of these three essentials, "The Realm of Rhetoric" comes close to achieving only the third, and doesn't achieve that one well. The plausibility of an idea decreases as the opacity of its presentation increases.The ideas expressed in this book, if expressed with brevity and clarity, would probably make a good essay. Expressed with prolixity and opacity, they make for a tedious book. Aristotle, an author not noted as an easy read, did a much better job over 2,000 years ago in his seminal work "On Rhetoric."
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