About this item
In 2010, award-winning journalist John Bowe learned that his cousin Bill, a longtime extreme recluse living in his parents' basement, had, at the age of fifty-nine, overcome a lifetime of shyness and isolation - and gotten happily married. Bill credited his turnaround to Toastmasters, the world's largest organization devoted to teaching the art of public speaking.Fascinated by the possibility that speech training could foster the kind of psychological well-being more commonly sought through psychiatric treatment, and intrigued by the notion that words can serve as medicine, Bowe set out to discover the origins of speech training - and to learn for himself how to speak better in public.From the birth of democracy in Ancient Greece until two centuries ago, education meant, in addition to reading and writing, years of learning specific, easily taught language techniques for interacting with others.
About the Author
John Bowe has contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, GQ, McSweeney's, This American Life, and many others. He is the co-editor of Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs (Crown, 1999) ; editor of Us: Americans Talk About Love (Faber USA, 2010) , and author of Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy (Random House, 2007) . He co-wrote the screenplay for the movie Basquiat. He is a recipient of the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award, the Hillman Prize, the Richard J. Margolis Award, and the Harry Chapin Media Award, for reporting on hunger-and poverty-related issues. He was born in Wayzata, Minnesota. He currently lives in New York City.
