Speeches that Changed the World presents over 50 momentous and thought-provoking speeches from throughout history. Complete with a brief biography of each speaker, and telling the story of why each oration was significant and what happened as a result, this is a gripping history of the world told through its greatest and most impassioned speeches. Comprehensively updated with many new speeches including Earl Spencer's lament to "The extraordinary and irreplaceable Diana," Nikita Khrushchev's secret speech of 1956 signalling the beginning of the end of Stalinist Russia, Patrick Pearse's rousing funeral oration that fanned the flames of the Easter Rising, Kevin Rudd's historic apology to Australia's mistreated Aborigines and Barack Obama's momentous US election night victory speech. Alongside these are the finest war cries of Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King's prophetic "I have a dream" and "I've seen the promised land" speeches, the inspiring words of JFK and impassioned pleas from Nelson Mandela-the first at his trial in 1964 and the second on his election as president of South Africa in 1994. In addition are historic speeches from Elizabeth I, Charles I, Oliver Cromwell, George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, Abraham Lincoln, Emmeline Pankhurst, Mahatma Gandhi, Vladimir Lenin, Neville Chamberlain, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Charles de Gaulle, General George S. Patton, J Robert Oppenheimer, Mao Zedong, Malcolm X, Richard M. Nixon, Pope John Paul II, Vaclav Havel, Elie Wiesel, Mikhail Gorbachev and many other great historical figures.

Author Biography

Simon Sebag Montefiore was born in 1965 and read history at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge University. Catherine the Great & Potemkin was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson, Duff Cooper, and Marsh Biography Prizes. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar won the History Book of the Year Prize at the British Book Awards. Young Stalin won the Costa Biography Award (UK), the LA Times Book Prize for Biography (US), Le Grand Prix de la Biographie Politique (France) and the Kreisky Prize for Political Literature (Austria). He lives with his wife, the novelist Santa Montefiore, and their two children in London.