Dreams from My Father: Preface, Intro, Ch.1

This book, originally published in 1995, is President Barack Obama's first book. As "A Story of Race and Inheritance", the author insightfully depicts the author's ancestry and the challenges his parents and grandparents faced involving race. Throughout the first chapter, Obama, after finding out that his father died, traces his roots back to his father as a Kenyan immigrant and his mother as a white liberal from Illinois. He recalls his earliest childhood memories in Hawaii after his father left the family. Lastly, he sets the stage for his later childhood years, where he will inevitably face prejudice, and begin his journey to self-discovery.
While I was reading the book, it was hard to imagine the future president in 1995 writing a book well before he was even the Senator from Illinois. However, the thought keeps me interested in the book because it establishes his credibility as the author of the story.
The context around this story is the publicity following his election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. Obama took a year off to write his thoughts about race relations on paper, but book tuned out to be very different than as planned. The purpose of this book is to give a perspective on racism by telling the story of a very successful person who went through racial hardship while growing up. His audience is a very broad base of readers who are interested in inheritance, race, and how they relate to each other.
A rhetorical element that stuck out to me was the terrific imagery Obama uses when describing his family members and anecdotes. His words are very appealing and allow the reader think about how the author must feel about these people and events. Using these rhetorical strategies helps Obama successfully accomplish his purpose.       

PBS: NFL Board Paid $2 Million to Players While Denying Football-Concussion Link

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sports/concussion-watch/nfl-board-paid-2m-to-players-while-league-denied-football-concussion-link/

This article reveals the many flaws within the stubborn, hypocritical organization known as the NFL. The majority of the article overviews cases with permanently injured players after they retire, quoting various doctors outside of the NFL, stating things along the lines of "the League is ignoring devastating evidence and denying direct links between football careers and T&P (total and permanent) injury." One of the ongoing stories throughout the piece was the Mike Webster claim in the 90's and early 00's, where Webster was the first ex-player diagnosed with the degenerative brain disorder, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy.

Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wada wrote this article for PBS, the non-profit, large public broadcasting network that has been around for over 40 years. The context of this article is around the authors' new book coming out in 2013, and although the article never specifically references to it, the piece does make the author want to read more about these types of injuries.

The purpose of this article is to prepare and perhaps excite the authors' audience of reminiscent football fans for their upcoming book next year. In order to achieve this goal rhetorically, the authors brought up a widespread controversy dating back over the last 30 years to attract older and younger football fans and make them interested in the subject. Specifically, they used enthymemes about the link between football and permanent brain injury to the players. I think the authors achieved this goal successfully because the reader is prone to leaving this article with a greater interest in post-football disorders of NFL players.

Bill Clinton Speech at Montco - 11/5/12

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pxd8MH_9EVQ

On November 5th, only a day before the 2012 election, former President Bill Clinton spoke at pro-Obama rally at Montgomery County Community College in Pennsylvania. In this portion of the speech, appropriately titled "the future", Clinton discussed how President Obama is the right choice in this election by describing the president's past actions and how they will positively affect students and the middle class. For example, he described a program going into effect next year that will have students pay a low, fixed student loan rate off of their income.
As many Americans know right now, the United States is going through tough times. The economy is recovering at a sluggish rate, the number of Americans on food stamps or welfare is increasing, and students are graduating from college into an environment with 7.9% unemployment. Considering these times, former President Clinton spoke for his audience of young people and students to inspire and connect with Montgomery County citizens and to encourage them to vote for President Obama on Election Day.
Two prominent rhetorical elements President Clinton used in his speech were logos and pathos. He used logos by sharing irrefutable facts to express his point and pathos by connecting to the people living in that area and talking about the Community College itself: "What works is what works here... We have a lot of cooperation at the community college, do you like that?... [Obama] has invested in the finest student loan reform in my lifetime."
Former President Bill Clinton accomplished his purpose successfully through this speech because he made his audience energetic and enthusiastic. Also, he implemented Obama's name behind each of the successes in this country, which led the audience to respond in a very confident, positive manner.
  

Moneyball ch 5: The Jeremy Brown Blue Plate Special

This chapter of my independent reading for the quarter really stuck out to me because this is the point in the story where Billy Beane, Paul DePodesta, and the Oakland A's management really start turning Bill James's theory into reality. Beane's long list of unorthodox methods in choosing players for the 2002 MLB Draft is revealed to the rest of the organization, causing shock and possibly snickering throughout the rest of the league. For example, Beane and DePodesta make a "wish list" of twenty ballplayers who in a perfect world would receive in the draft. To everyone's surprise, they get thirteen of them, when most teams would be happy to get three.
This was an absolute stab at the conventional wisdom and context of running a Major League Baseball team. Before Billy Beane, teams hardly implemented any statistical analysis in the MLB. The other GMs did not realize that they were misinterpreting their players by looking the wrong stats (steals, hits) instead of the stats that actually lead to wins (OBP, slugging). The purpose of this chapter was to show to baseball readers the breakthrough of Bill James's long lost ideas into fruition. This breakthrough will lead to a new outlook toward decision-making in the MLB. That is, of course, not until the A's prove the success of their method.
A rhetorical device used often in this chapter is onomatopoeia, specifically when describing actions being done in the A's management room during the draft. For example, Lewis describes cheers and other sounds every time Billy Beane the A's scouts luck out of a draft pick. Lewis thoroughly accomplished his purpose of showing the breakthrough by capturing the emotion and conveying it to the reader through this device.