In this unconventional, easy-to-use thesaurus, Heehler, a degree student at the Harvard Extension School, invites the reader to speak like an academic without sounding like one. Written in accessible yet sophisticated language, the book offers 17 lessons on rhetorical form and design, using the writing techniques and rhetorical formulas of 17 writers and speakers, including Ken Kesey, Barbara Kingsolver, Margaret Atwood, T. S. Eliot, Cormac McCarthy, and Barack Obama. Techniques covered include the conversion of the figurative, verb displacement, poetic articles, and creative prepositions. Readers are steered from the seven rhetorical sins (melodrama, needlessness, cliché, pretension, craftiness, perkiness, and wordiness) with particularly odious examples. Entries on common words and phrases in the thesaurus section provide not just synonyms, but more powerful words, which the author calls powernyms, illustrated with example boxes. A list of 200 well-spoken alternatives to common words and phrases rounds out the reference. Heehler is the creator of a free online language course called Fluent in Five Languages. Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)