The efficiency of a book is like that of a man, in one important respect: its
attitude toward its subject is the first source of its power. A book may be full of
good ideas well expressed, but if its writer views his subject from the wrong
angle even his excellent advice may prove to be ineffective.
This book stands or falls by its authors' attitude toward its subject. If the best
way to teach oneself or others to speak effectively in public is to fill the mind
with rules, and to set up fixed standards for the interpretation of thought, the
utterance of language, the making of gestures, and all the rest, then this book
will be limited in value to such stray ideas throughout its pages as may prove
helpful to the reader—as an effort to enforce a group of principles it must be
reckoned a failure, because it is then untrue.