The rhetorician : demagogue or statesman? Plato's Gorgias and Aristotle's Rhetoric
Eloquence, persuasion, and invention : Cicero's De oratore
Rhetoric and the search for God : Augustine's On Christian doctrine and confessions
Practical reason or self-interested calculation? : Cicero's On duties and Machiavelli's Prince
Tradition and invention : Bacon's aphorisms and the Essays
Deception, strong speech, and mild discourse in Milton's early prose and Paradise lost
Prudence and eloquence in Jane Austen's Persuasion
Literary criticism and rhetorical invention : Wayne C. Booth's The rhetoric of fiction and Stephen Greenblatt's Marvelous possessions
Faction, and politics, and rhetorical invention : Eugene Garver's For the sake of argument and Danielle S. Allen's Talking to strangers
Legal reasoning, historical contingency, and change : Edward H. Levi's An introduction to legal reasoning.