Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators

Hubbard believed that where giants walked, the ground still trembled. In this volume of his celebrated 'Little Journeys' series, he visits the homes and haunts of history's most electrifying orators, from ancient Athens where Pericles shaped democracy, to the revolutionary France that heard Marat's radical cries, from Martin Luther's Germany to Robert Ingersoll's America. These are not conventional biographies but something stranger: Hubbard walks the rooms, breathes the air, and attempts to divine how environment became destiny. What did Mark Antony's streets teach him about moving multitudes? How did Luther's study become a crucible fortransforming Christendom? Hubbard's method is personal, opinionated, sometimes infuriating, but always alive with the conviction that great speakers are made, not born. For readers who crave history as intellectual pilgrimage, these essays offer a vanished way of thinking about how genius takes root in specific soil.