RI in Rhetoric & Reflection: Public Addresses and Essays by Patrick T. Conley

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"Whatever Patrick T. Conley sets out to do, he does masterfully — whether that be teaching, public speaking, practicing law, developing real estate, preforming on the athletic field, volunteering his expert organizational skills, ghost writing political position papers, or writing history. The latter is his passion. He has a profound grasp of American history and his bibliographic knowledge is breathtaking. In this, his latest volume, Conley is at his best in offering an astonishing array of Rhode Island History. This tiniest of states has played a significant role in the country’s development, much of which is analyzed with great detail in the varied pieces in this volume. With his usual fidelity to the highest standards of scholarship, Conley examines her constitutional history from colonial and Revolutionary times, to the nineteenth-century upheaval fo Dorr’s Rebellion, to Rhode Island’s twentieth-century constitutional conventions. He deftly investigates religious history , nativism, ethnic studies, sports history, local history, and biography. Throughout these offerings Conley’s charm, wit, and humor shine through. Many of these pieces were either delivered as speeches or printed in out-of-the way publications. This volume pulls together these disparate “words… written on the wind” and makes them readily available to a broad audience. Undeniably, Pat Conley is the greatest historian of Rhode Island ever. His book helps prove that fact."  --John P. Kaminski, Director of The Center for the Study of the American Constitution and Editor of The Documentary of History of the Ratification of the Constitution