Tackles one of the thorniest and longest-standing issues in the discipline of rhetoric - the issue of effects. Though situated and strategic oral rhetoric is created for instrumental ends, its study has been limited in recent decades. Amos Kiewe and Davis W. Houck seek to resurrect the study of effects and consider it as the cornerstone of the rhetorical critic's enterprise - what rhetoric actually does.

Davis W. Houck is a professor of communication at Florida State University. He is the author or editor of ten books, including several critically acclaimed anthologies about the American civil rights movement.