""Kennedy's exposition is lucid and elegant, his enthusiasm for his subject infectious. Accordingly, the reader approaching that subject for the first time will be frequently enlightened, but never bored: indeed he will probably be stimulated to turn to the author's earlier works for further enlightenment.""

--From the review of the original printing by J. D. Frendo in The Classical Review, vol. 34, no. 2, 1984, pp. 204-5:

George A. Kennedy is Paddison Professor of Classics, Emeritus, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an elected Member of the American Philosophical Society, and Fellow of the Rhetoric Society of America. Under Presidents Carter and Reagan, Dr. Kennedy served as member of the National Humanities Council. He was earlier President of the American Philological Association and of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric. He is author of fifteen books, including Classical Rhetoric and its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times, New Testament Interpretation through Rhetorical Criticism, Comparative Rhetoric: An Historical and Cross-Cultural Introduction, Aristotle On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, and Progymnasmata: Greek Textbooks of Prose Composition, as well as numerous articles and translations into English from Greek, Latin, and French.