Patrick Barry - Böcker

If your success at work or in school depends on your ability to communicate persuasively in writing, you’ll want to get Good with Words. Based on a course that law students at the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago have called "outstanding," "A-M-A-Z-I-N-G," and "the best course I have ever taken," the book brings together a collection of concepts, exercises, and examples that have also helped improve the advocacy skills of people pursuing careers in many other fields—from marketing, to management, to medicine.

The Syntax of Sports is that course you wish you took in college—even if you aren’t a sports fan. It’s interesting. It’s practical. It’s inspiring. And best of all, it teaches you a skill that is at once highly marketable and potentially transforming: how to become a better thinker and writer.The beginning of a multi-volume series, this initial book recreates the first day of class as it was taught to undergraduates at the University of Michigan. The examples are compelling. The dialogue is fast moving. The stories are ones you’ll want to return to and retell over and over again. There is a reason the actual students who took The Syntax of Sports said the following things about it:“Every class I learned something new that I know I’ll actually use in my writing for years to come. Couldn’t be happier that I took a chance on Syntax of Sports.”“Prof. Barry has structured the course so that it’s almost impossible not to learn something valuable to take with you to future classes and future career possibilities.”“I have learned a ton of techniques for being a better writer in this class. I have also learned many life lessons that will undoubtedly guide how I act in the future.”“I absolutely loved this course because the teacher was so awesome. I enjoyed sitting through class listening to Professor Barry and falling in love with his brain.”

It’s not an accident that hall of fame coaches, Pulitzer Prize-winning writers, and the marketing teams at the most innovative companies in the world often rely on a certain three-part structure when trying to communicate their ideas. This third volume of The Syntax of Sports series explores the mechanics of that structure and shows how it can add a compelling mix of clarity and sophistication to your writing.Like in the previous volumes, the materials come from a popular course at the University of Michigan. Here are comments from students who have taken it:“The quality of this course was fantastic!”“Professor Barry really knows how to keep students engaged.”“Professor Barry is very passionate about teaching, and his enthusiasm made me want to write and learn.”“This course not only helps you become a better writer but also sheds light on how you might become a better person.”

What can we learn from baseball great Ted Williams about how to improve our writing? What can we learn we from the iconic ESPN show SportsCenter about how to manage information? And are you sure you really know what the word “peruse” means? Explore these and other questions in the second volume of The Syntax of Sports, a series designed to recreate a popular course at the University of Michigan. Here are a few things students have said about the experience of taking it.“Patrick Barry is the best teacher I have ever had. I have never learned so much in a class. I hated English my whole life until I took this course.”“I feel like this is and always will be the most valuable class I've ever taken here.”“I genuinely wanted to show up to this class due to the amount I knew I would learn.” “I'm going to severely SEVERELY miss this course.”“Every student should try to take one of Prof. Barry’s classes if he or she wants to become a better writer.”“My writing is now 113x better.”

To succeed in law, business, education, government, health care, and many other fields, it is becoming increasingly important to distinguish yourself as a savvy communicator. Social media has only accelerated the ways in which we all must learn to use our words to connect, compete, and create. There are features of the English language, however, that many of us haven’t taken full advantage of yet. Notes on Nuance is designed to help change that.Drawing on a diverse collection of authors—from novelists to physicists, from ancient Greek historians to modern-day CEOs—it reveals the hidden mechanics that skilled writers use to add style and sophistication to their sentences and slogans. It’s the perfect resource for people who are looking to do more with their written words.This book includes materials from a popular course called “Good with Words: Writing and Editing” that Professor Patrick Barry created at both the University of Michigan Law School and the University of Chicago Law School. An online version of that course is now available through the educational platform Coursera.

Suppose you were good with words. Suppose when you decided to speak, the message you delivered—and the way you delivered it—successfully connected with your intended audience. What would that mean for your career prospects? What would that mean for your comfort level in social situations? And perhaps most importantly, what would that mean for your satisfaction with the personal relationships you value the most?This book is designed to help you find out. Based on an award-winning course and workshop series at the University of Michigan taken by students training to enter a wide range of fields—law, business, medicine, social work, public policy, design, engineering, and many more—it removes the guesswork from figuring out how to communicate clearly and compellingly. All of us have ideas that are worth sharing. Why not learn how to convey yours in a way that people will appreciate, enjoy, and remember?

“Once you find the right structure, perhaps it will be easier to find the right content.” That’s one of the key insights from this fourth book in the series The Syntax of Sports. Others include:The importance of being “radically inclusive”The power of defining something by what it is notThe creative elegance of the word “as”So join Professor Patrick Barry as he continues to share lessons from the popular writing course at the University of Michigan on which The Syntax of Sports is based. You’ll learn about language. You’ll learn about advocacy. And you’ll get to explore some illuminating connections between everything from the speeches of Winston Churchill, to the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci, to—perhaps most surprisingly—the face of NFL legend (and former University of Michigan quarterback) Tom Brady.

Good editors don’t just see the sentence that was written. They see the sentence that might have been written. They know how to spot words that shouldn’t be included and summon up ones that haven’t yet appeared. Their value comes not just from preventing mistakes but from discovering new ways to improve a piece of writing’s style, structure, and overall impact.This book— which is based on a popular course taught at the University of Chicago Law School, the University of Michigan Law School, and the UCLA School of Law— is designed to help you become one of those editors. You’ll learn how to edit with empathy. You’ll learn how to edit with statistics. You’ll learn, in short, a wide range of compositional skills you can use to elevate your advocacy and better champion the causes you care about the most.

With a little knowledge and a lot of practice, you can do more than just sound more professional when you skillfully use commas, semicolons, and other forms of punctuation. You can, importantly, become more persuasive. That’s what students who have taken Professor Patrick Barry’s classes at the University of Michigan Law School, the University of Chicago Law School, and the UCLA School of Law have learned, as have the over 100,000 people who have enrolled in his online course “Good with Words: Writing and Editing” on the educational platforms Coursera and FutureLearn. Now, thanks to this book, you can undergo that same rhetorical transformation. Punctuation doesn’t have to be a pain point. When properly mastered, it can be a powerful tool for all kinds of advocates.

Learning how to give and receive feedback is fundamental to the development of every student and professional. Yet few of us are ever taught anything like “feedback skills.” This book, which is the first in the Feedback Loops series, is designed to change that. Here is what students who have taken the University of Michigan Law School course on which the series is based have said about it:“One of the most memorable and useful classes I have taken in law school!”“Excellent, full stop.”“This class was always a fun highlight of my week.”

What can sports fans who start “the wave” at a big stadium teach us about getting people to speak up in class or at an important meeting? What can the poet Maya Angelou and the boxer Joe Louis teach us about streamlining sentences and paragraphs? And how exactly do we get our ideas to flow in powerfully persuasive ways? Explore these and other questions in the seventh volume of The Syntax of Sports, a series based on the innovative and highly interdisciplinary courses Professor Patrick Barry teaches at the University of Michigan.

The Rule of St Benedict, just 9000 words long and written 1500 years ago, has proved to be one of the most timeless, influential and lasting of all texts. Its realism about human character, its extraordinary practical wisdom and its original recipe for creating a work/life balance have made it famous way beyond the monastic communities whose lives it has shaped for centuries. Today many secular people are finding that the Rule makes sense of their lives too. This book simply consists of the Rule in a modern language and an introduction to the seven basic elements of Benedictine spirituality.