Reviews for Quotations for Speeches

The average rating for Quotations for Speeches based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-04-10 00:00:00 Chris Swink A very good friend of mine has recently returned from a visit to America and Canada where she took in the Niagara Falls. And she enthused so much over the experience that I decided I would get her a book as a Christmas present. It duly arrived and I browsed it and was so enchanted with what I saw that I just had to read it ... and then give it her as a present on 25 December! (I have been very careful with it and it still looks unread!) What a splendid book, Pierre Berton deserves much credit for putting together such a collection of historic and contemporary photographs and for telling a detailed history of the Falls and bringing to life all the personalities that have made it the tourist attraction that it now is. More than three centuries ago in 1683 Father Louis Hennepin was the first European traveller to write about the Falls. He described it as 'frightful' and said he could not 'behold it without a shudder'. Midway through the following century, Swedish naturalist Pehr Kalm said that it made his hair stand on end and in 1805 the naturalist poet Alexander Wilson said the Falls, 'seized, at once, all powers of speech away and filled our souls with terror and dismay'. Strong words but it is possible that some of the modern day tourists, who visit in their thousands, may feel similar emotions . Artists galore have captured the splendour of the Falls with Thomas Davies, a military artist and trained watercolourist, being credited with the first known portrait done around 1766. And many famous literary men and women have commented on the Falls' splendour. Charles Dickens commented, 'When I felt how near to my Creator I was standing, the first effect, and the enduring one - instant and lasting - of the tremendous spectacle was Peace. Peace of Mind: Tranquillity: Calm recollections of the Dead: Great thoughts of Eternal Rest and Happiness: Nothing of Gloom and Terror. Niagara was at once stamped upon my heart, an Image of Beauty.' Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Harriet Beecher Stowe, H G Wells and Rupert Brooke were others who made suitable comment. And Abraham Lincoln was reported as simply saying, 'The thing that struck me most forcibly when I saw the falls was where in the world did all that water come from?' By 1860 the tourist industry at Niagara was in full bloom with the early railways bringing in 50,000 people each summer - when this book was published, 1993, 12 million visitors poured in, most arriving by car. And there are plenty of images to show how things have changed since the early days; an 1859 photograph shows a visitor sitting in quiet seclusion, contemplating the Falls, something that is virtually impossible these days. And the fashion of the visitors has changed, too. In earlier days visitors were dressed in the height of fashion whereas today, as is to be expected, dress is much more informal - comparing the many wonderful historic photographs with those of today highlights this change. In the 19th century there was what was known as the "Front", an exuberant strip that stretched along the lip of the gorge from Table Rock to the Clifton House. And there 'every kind of tout, blackguard, salesman, entrepreneur and confidence trickster' took the tourists' money. Now the old Front has gone thanks to the creation of Victoria Park but the carnival goes on , 'more respectable than its predecessor but just as gaudy', with Clifton Hill as its main artery. Developments were always ongoing around the Falls, John Roebling built a railway suspension bridge, the Great Gorge Route provided a 'most delightful street-car ride', the Upper Steel Arch, also known as Honeymoon Bridge, was once a popular spot - it collapsed in 1938 - and there was an inclined railway that took tourists to the boat landing at the water's edge by the base of the American Falls. And developments to harness the power of the Falls was carried out by such as Edward Dean Adams, Jacob Schoellkopf, Adam Beck and Robert Moses, among others. The powerhouses they built looked like palaces and there are some magnificent photographs of the building of some of them as well as dramatic ones of the Schoellkopf powerplant collapsing in June 1956. And drama of a more entertaining nature has never been far away. Jean Fran�ois Gravelet, better known as Blondin, said when visiting the Falls in 1858, 'What a splendid place to bridge with a tightrope' and although his friends thought he was joking, he returned the following summer to demonstrate what he meant. Bill Hunt of Port Hope, Michigan, announced in 1860 that he would duplicate all of Blondin's feats and, using the more exotic performing name of Signor Guillermo Antonio Farini, he did just that in the early summer of 1860. There were others through the 1860s and 1870s but the last of the big-time funambulists, Clifford Calverly, wowed the crowds in the 1890s when he propelled a wheelbarrow of his own design across the gorge on his swaying cable. Then there were the barrel riders who rode the falls. One such was Carlisle Graham, the "Hero of Whirlpool Rapids", a cooper (not surprisingly perhaps) who made four trips through those waters beginning n 1886. And there was Martha Wagenfuhrer who was known as "The Maid of the Falls" who in 1891 used Graham's barrel to successfully navigate the Whirlpool. But it was Annie Taylor, the "Queen of the Mist" who put her rivals in the shade when she, aged 61 in 1901, became the first human to plunge over the Horseshoe Falls in a barrel of her own design. Needless to say this action immortalised her! And so Niagara Falls flows on and this absolutely superb book, particularly pictorially but also textually, captures, history, action, personalities - I never knew, for instance, that it was there in a woodshed in 1884 that a young college graduate, Charles Martin Hall, found a way to separate aluminium from common clay - and the current situation in and around Niagara, which today is big business all around the Falls on both the American and Canadian sides.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-02-18 00:00:00 Martin Jungverdorben This was a pretty interesting take on mythical animals. I tend to be of the same opinion as the author on some of it. He talks of how he believes certain of these animals were real at some point in time and presents pretty good support for his belief. I recommend this as a reference book and if you enjoy reading about mythical (or maybe not mythical) creatures, such as dragons.