Former comedy club host, online philosophy professor, and keynote speaker Dr. Matt Deaton covers everything from preparation to posture, microphones to mindset, hand gestures to hecklers in the second edition of his ambitiously titled The Best Public Speaking Book. And he does it with such endearing levity that you forget you're learning to do something scarier than dying (at least according to Seinfeld). The core of his approach is his Three Commandments:

I. Know Thy Material

II. Be Thyself

III. Practice.

Study your subject, polish your authentic stage self, and intelligently rehearse, and you're more than halfway there. To get the rest of the way, there's:

• The Urban Honey Badger (honored on the book's cover), an unconventional assertiveness drill designed to vanquish nervousness and build a confident (and slightly edgy) stage presence
• How to develop a message that's easy for you to deliver and for your audience to absorb (when points logically flow, everyone wins)
• How to tailor your silent message to win your audience respect and attention
• The modern essentials: how to effectively use PowerPoint (hint: visuals > text), present to a remote audience (assume they're watching Netflix... on the potty), and select a quality clicker (hint: range > lasers)
• All the classic essentials, too: enunciation ("rubber baby buggy bumpers"), voice projection, eye contact (for audience members without face tattoos, anyway), when (and when not) to use a lectern, and why reading a script is the lowest form of public speaking (good news: follow Deaton's Three Commandments and you won't need a script)

Add a humble professor's touch, a dash of coaching, encouragement, and inspiration (something Deaton admits needing lots of when he began), and you've got one heck of an engaging and effective book. Read the reviews. Listen to the sample. Hear for yourself why this second edition of Deaton's inviting how-to just might be the best public speaking book.