"Enough Said" by Mark Thompson

I do not read much non-fiction, but I had read the reviews, and when I saw the book in the library, I could not resist Mark Thompson's book "Enough Said--What's Wrong With The Language of Politics."  A timely subject after the horrors of the presidential campaign. Mark Thompson was director general of the BBC for eight years, from 2004 to 2012, when he became president and CEO of the New York Times Company. His experience in both positions is often drawn on to enliven his text.  He stresses the importance of words in the political context--"days when the right words are all that count and it is the speaker who can find them who determines what happens next." The book is discursive and covers a wide range of topics from Sarah Palin's "death panels" to Trump's anti-scientific views on vaccinations, Churchill's and Blair's war speeches, and controversies over 'hate speech' and freedom of speech. He gets into the three phases of rhetoric--ethos, pathos, and logos, and traces the influence of Madison Avenue marketing and consumer research on electioneering. Altogether a fascinating read...maybe a bit on the long side, and occasionally I was tempted to skip a little, but certainly a timely book in the year of Trump and Brexit. And, I am afraid--long on the problems, but short on the solutions...as we all are, hoping for the best but fearing the worst.