There are a lot of books on the subject of public speaking. A lot. But are they all equal? I don’t think so.



I've decided to put together a list of ones I feel worthy. The books that made this list offer fundamentals, yes, but they offer much more—a new perspective on speaking.



We’re sitting in 2016 and the world is unresponsive to boring. They want authenticity. They want practical information that goes above the average motivational “ra ra.” And dammit, they want to be entertained!



The world is skeptical of a suit and tie (or Hillary Clinton’s pant suits). They’re tired of canned stories drenched in excessive descriptive phrases like this one, “the breeze swooshed and swirled in the dark and dreary night sky as the lightning thundered down to the ice-cold concrete which rumbled and shocked my toes, and the noise was so loud that the children on Jupiter awoke to its shrill.”



We got it already, your night was more exciting than ours.



Can we just have real? Please. Well, that’s what these authors all have in common: they’re real.