Moving mountains: or, The Art of Letting Others See Things Your Way

by Henry M. Boettinger

In his classic text on how to organize one's thoughts into a logical and enjoyable presentation, Boettinger outlines ways in which presenters will not only have their ideas heard but also understood and accepted.

340 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

Reviews

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a neglected masterpiece, out of print, and originally published in 1969. I first heard of it because my book Give Your Speech, Change the World was voted the best book on public speaking ever in one category in a recent judging by a panel of communications experts. In another category, Give Your Speech was second, and Moving Mountains was first. That naturally made me curious, since I hadn’t heard of it, and so I tracked it down in a used bookstore and devoured it.
There’s bad news and good news. The book is indeed from another era, and it is hopelessly out of date in terms of style and approach to the subject. There’s no scientific research in it, just the author’s experience and wisdom. And he spends far too much time wandering through the thickets of Western literature, philosophy, and economics before he gets to the point.
So I’m afraid the book won’t get a wide readership; it’s just too old-fashioned. But that said, it’s full of surprising insights into persuasion and public speaking. You have to dig through the allusions and discursions to find them, but they’re in there!
Let me give you a very brief example of what I mean. Here’s a section on the very good idea that you can grab your audience’s attention with opposites, or by telling them something unexpected:
Attempts to understand how development takes place have occupied the best minds of every discipline over the last 2,500 years. I am not about to give the final answer. In fact, some theories of development hold that no final answer is ever possible. But there is one view that is extremely useful for anyone faced with the job stringing together the various aspects of a problem in order to produce acceptance for his particular solution, i.e., the presentation of an idea. This is the method of the dialectic, as propounded by a great, but verbose, German philosopher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831). The idea of the dialectic is one that has been known to every wise man since prehistory. Aristotle embodies it in his quest for “the Golden Mean,” where he believes that truth lies between the extremes of viewpoints….
And so on. You get the idea. Hopeless for today’s reader, but the book is full of insights that jump out at you from prose like this from time to time. Moving Mountains belongs in the library of every serious student of the persuasive arts.

[Andrew Leroy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although a little dated this book still contains very good information on the art of persuasion and how to create interesting lectures that will keep people listening to what you are trying to tell them.