The Craft of Scientific Presentations

from techniques of stagecraft and rhetoric. ... The Craft of Scientific Presentations is informal in tone but serious in intend. Alley makes the reader think about the point of a presentation, about different kinds of presentations, and about different techniques ... . He is at his best discussing well-chosen examples from both great and lesser-known lecturers, and his counsel to anticipate what could go wrong is sage advice." (Chris Quigg, Physics Today, July, 2004)"The author, an experienced teacher, adds numerous examples not only from his praxis, but found in many biographies, memorial books, and articles of well known scientists and speakers. ... Due to the applied form the book presents amusing reading for everybody ... . Forty-one illustrations accompany the text ... . Beginners in presenting speeches will find the book a source of both useful and interesting information, experienced lecturers can learn many amazing stories from the history of science." (Z. sesták, Photosynthetica, Vol. 41 (4), 2003)"What makes an oral presentation effective? The Craft of Presentations considers presentations made to persuade an audience to adopt some course of action (such as funding a proposal) as well as presentations made to communicate information ... . Its goal is to provide you with the insights and tools to let you learn from your own presentations until they become outstanding." (Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics, Vol. 84 (1-2), 2003)"A failure to communicate the principal message of a scientific presentation can have literally catastrophic consequences. ... the book does contain much good advice. This is summarised in useful tables and checklists that are easy to locate and refer to subsequently. Having just returned from a large international conference, I only wish that many of the speakers had studied Alley's book." (Keith McEwen, Physics World, October, 2003)"Rather than present a list of simple rules for giving scientific presentations, this book looks at the styles of successful presenters such as Boltzmann, Einstein, Feynman, Levi-Montalcini and Linus Pauling ... . The bulk of the book considers in detail ten critical errors that undermine the performance of the speaker, from giving the wrong speech to not preparing enough to not paying attention and loosing composure." (Book News on the Internet, June, 2003)