The Beginnings of Rhetorical Theory in Classical Greece by Edward Schiappa. Yale UP, 1999; 225 pp. Josiah Ober, Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. Plato's Dream of Sophistry by Richard Marback. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press (1999): 147 pp. Reality by Design: The Rhetoric and Technology of Authenticity in Education by Joseph Petraglia. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998. 202 pp. Hermeneutics and the Rhetorical Tradition: Chapters in the Ancient Legacy & Its Humanist Reception by Kathy Eden. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997.

Rethinking the Rhetorical Tradition: From Plato to Postmodernism by James L. Kastely. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. Sage, Saint, and Sophist: Holy Men and Their Associates in the Early Roman Empire by Graham Anderson. London & New York: Routledge, 1994.289 pp. Humanism and the Rhetoric of Toleration, by Gary Reiner. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996; 318 pp. The Rhetoric of Law edited by Austin Sarat and Thomas L. Kearns. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1994, 332 pp. Green Culture: Environmental Rhetoric in Contemporary America edited by Carl G. Herndl and Stuart C. Brown. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1996.315 pp.

Whenever I give a talk about the Rhetoric, audiences ask about rhetorical deception and fraud, about the morality of rhetoric, and about how to tell a good rhetorician from a sophist. The first and most important thing to say about the Rhetoric in connection with such questions of the morality of rhetoric is that Aristotle has very little to say about them, and, as far as I can tell, very little interest in them. Contemporary readers of the Rhetoric see people constantly duped by slick commercial and political advertisements, and hope that the Rhetoric can help them become conscious of hidden persuasion, or to make more morally based discriminations between decent appeals, which they should trust, and immoral ones, which they should reject. Rhetoric is often promoted today as an equivalent to defensive driving. It is worth asking why these questions have so little interest for Aristotle.

Abstract Nineteenth‐Century Rhetoric in North America by Nan Johnson. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1991. 313. Protagoras and Logos: A Study in Greek Philosophy and Rhetoric by Edward Schiappa. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1991. xvii + 239. Rhetoric and Irony, Western Literacy and Western Lies by C. Jan Swearingen. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991; xiv + 323. Democracy and the Mass Media: A Collection of Essays ed. Judith Lichtenberg. New York: Cambridge UP, 1990; 410. The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy by Albert O. Hirschman. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991, pp. xi+197.

The verb in the title of James B. White's When Words Lose Their Meaning directs attention to one direction of change, decay. White takes for his emblem the passage from Thucydides from which derives his title, as defining a topic and suggesting a view of life that directs attention to the relation between language, on the one hand, and both the individual self and collective life on the (1961-62). That direction of change that is the focus of attention resembles the plot Alasdair MacIntyre recounts in After Virtue and elsewhere, in which virtues become vices, arts become skills, goods become commodities, and practices and norms lose their intelligibility.1 Neither White nor MacIntyre offers a narrative of the opposite direction of change, in which words and deeds gain, or regain, meaning. Because of this emphasis on decline, each is a conservative, although not necessarily politically conservative, since in each while the processes of corruption are detailed innovative and fructifying forces by contrast appear beyond explanation as heroic. The absence of stories in which meaning and community increase does not mean that each thinks that the world has moved away from a golden age and is going to the dogs, although I see each often misread in that way. It simply means that there is an intelligible plot to decline, but not to advances. Advances happen, but there is no pattern to them. It takes, in White's accounts, someone of the status of Thucydides or James Madison, beyond rational planning, to make words gain meaning, and Aquinas occupies a similar place in MacIntyre's story. The exemplary performances of great literary texts, including great legal literary texts, constitute White's account of how words gain their meaning. There is no overall narrative pattern or story in which these exempla live, while the story of decline has a plot, contains explanatory forces, and all the other rhetorical devices that make it appear more intelligible than the story of how words gain their meaning. We can learn how words gain meaning from exempla, although not necessarily learn to imitate them, and we can learn about decline and fall through generalizations and narratives. The patterns of decline make it possible to fight against those forces, while there are no programs for creativity. Exemplary and causal history are both reasonable ways of talking about and learning from the past, but their co-

Michael Paul Rogin, "Ronald Reagan,”; the Movie and Other Episodes in Political Demonology (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987), 366pp. Jeffrey K. Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 209pp. Gerald Graff. Professing Literature: An Institutional History. University of Chicago Press, 1987. viii+315 pp. $24.95. Joseph Vining, The Authoritative and the Authoritarian, University of Chicago Press, 1986. In Search of Justice: The Indiana Tradition in Speech Communication. Richard J. Jensen and John C. Hammerback (editors). Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi, 1987. 311 Pp. Greek Rhetorical Origins of Christian Faith: An Inquiry. James L. Kinneavy. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. Pp. ix + 186. Literary Patronage in Greece and Rome. Barbara K. Gold. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1987. Pp. xii + 267. Introduction to Rhetorical Theory. Gerard A. Hauser. New York: Harper and Row, 1986. The Variables of Composition: Process and Product in a Business Setting. Glen J. Broadhead and Richard C. Freed. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986. 169 Pp.