About Talmage:
Keynote Speaker
How I Use Words in Multiple Arenas
In addition to the nexus between legal advocacy and public speaking, being a trial lawyer necessarily requires skill in asking witnesses the right questions. Thus, my vocation has opened up another important avocation for me in the arena of onstage interviewing of public figures and best-selling authors at major forums. Most of my interviews since March 2019 can be found on my podcast series “Cross-Examining History”, and they can be accessed by clicking on this link, and found on Spotify, iTunes, and SoundCloud. You can see my interview with former Secretary of State James A. Baker III at the George W. Bush Presidential Library by clicking on this link; and what leading figures have said about my onstage interviewing by clicking here.
My three main speech topics are...
- Lincoln, Churchill, and the Power of Words - a lesson on best practices in communication from the two greatest communicators of the last 200 years.
- Lawyers & Presidents: The Tie That Binds—a speech that matches up the Ten Commandments of Presidential Leadership with the legal profession’s disciplinary rules and civility creeds. – For a non-lawyer audience, the title of the speech is “The Ten Commandments of Presidential Leadership”.
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A Lesson on Civil Discourse from Harper Lee - a speech that explains why Atticus Finch should still be regarded as the ultimate role model for the legal profession, regardless of the change in his image between To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman. For a non-lawyer audience, you can describe the speech as “a speech that explains why Atticus Finch should still be regarded as a hero and role model for all professionals, regardless of the change in his image between To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman.
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- Talmage Boston interviews Jon Meacham at the George W. Bush Library
The final connection between my vocation and my avocations is writing for publication. After I’d been a lawyer for 12 years, I decided to start writing for publication in hopes of putting my work product in front of larger crowds. So for the last 30 years, writing for publication has become an increasingly important part of my leisure time. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough said it best about the nature of the writing process: “Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That’s why it’s so hard.” My four books have received a fair amount of critical acclaim and been about my three favorite areas of history: baseball, law, and American presidents. (Cross-Examining History, 1939, Baseball and the Baby Boomers, and Raising the Bar). Harry S. Truman said it best as to why history will always captivate the human spirit: “The only new thing in the world is the history you don’t know.”
Since 1991, my Op-Ed essays and book reviews in newspapers and magazines have given me the chance to organize and express my thoughts about current events and important books to a large audience. I have found that staying in a steady mode of synthesizing my thoughts and then expressing them on paper in an orderly fashion is a very rewarding exercise. Click Here to view my most recent articles from the Dallas Morning News, Dallas Business Journal, Texas Bar Journal, New York Times and Washington Independent Review of Books. Dallas Morning News - Baby boomers are delaying retirement, and it’s not just because of finances - It’s time to require senior citizen presidential candidates to undergo complete physicals - Talmage Boston: How Jackie Robinson went from workplace integrator to civil rights hero - Talmage Boston: Ten-commandments for America’s next commander-in-chief - Washington and Eisenhower warned their successors against partisanship Texas Bar Journal - Presidential Leadership and Legal Professionalism: The Ties That Bind - Part Two - Presidential Leadership and Legal Professionalism: The Ties That Bind - Part One - The Power of Words: Best Practices in Communication for Lawyers, Courtesy of Winston Churchill - The Consummate Dealmaker: Best Practices in Negotiation for Lawyers, Courtesy of Henry Kissinger - Capacity for Courage The New York Times - Nicholas A. Basbanes’ Cross of Snow ably captures the genius of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - A look at Barry Gewen’s superlative The Inevitability of Tragedy: Henry Kissinger and His World Talmage has averaged 12 reviews a year for the WIROB over the last 3 years.
Talmage's 5 most recent Op-Ed essays for the DMN:
Talmage has written over 75 Op-Ed essays and book reviews for the Dallas Morning News.
Talmage's 6 most recent Op-Ed essays for the TBJ:
Talmage has written 16 Op-Ed Essays for the Texas Bar Journal.
Read Talmage's first book review for the NYT that appeared October 13, 2020:
Washington Independent Review of Books
Talmage's 7 most recent book reviews for the WIROB:
- Scott Turow’s The Last Trial deserves a place atop the legal-thriller genre
Yes, as a user and appreciator of word power, I do my best to interweave my vocation as a trial and appellate lawyer with my avocations of public speaking, onstage interviewing, and writing for publication, in hopes of being:
“a lubricant of society’s essential machinery…who seeks to make sure its parts mesh rather than clash …”
AND
“a sort of universal interpreter making the words of one speaker intelligible to another.”
Speaking Activities
- On The Subject Of Presidential History
- On The Subject of Baseball History
- Onstage Interviews
- Writing For Publication
- Civic Activities
- Education
Featured speaker to the following groups:
- National Archives in Washington, D.C.;
- Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress in Washington, D.C.
- George H.W. Bush Presidential Library, George W. Bush Presidential Library, and Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library;
- World Affairs Council chapters in Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Charlotte, Denver, Colorado Springs, Portland (Maine), Houston, Dallas/Fort Worth, and Corpus Christi; and
- James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, and Dick Thornburgh Forum for Law & Public Policy at the University of Pittsburgh
Featured speaker to the following groups:
Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library; George W. Bush Presidential Library; Princeton University; National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York; St. Louis Cardinals Legends Camp; Houston Museum of Fine Art; SMU Cox School of Business; Fenway Park Writers Association; Denver Forum; and Sam Houston State University.
- Have conducted two interview programs with former Secretary of State Dr. Henry Kissinger for the World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth.
- Have conducted four interview programs with former Secretary of State James A. Baker III for the Baker Institute of Public Policy at Rice University, the George W. Bush Presidential Center, Baylor Law School, and the Dallas Bar Foundation.
- Have conducted an interview with former First Lady Laura Bush for the annual fundraising dinner for Vision Africa at the George W. Bush Presidential Center.
- Have conducted interviews with bestselling novelist John Grisham for the Dallas Museum of Arts “Arts & Letters Live” Series and for the Texas Book Festival.
- Have conducted multiple onstage interviews in Dallas before large audiences with noted best-selling historians David McCullough, Ken Burns, Jon Meacham, Bob Woodward, Evan Thomas, H. W. Brands, Douglas Brinkley, Mark Updegrove, Peter Baker/Susan Glasser, David Maraniss, and Annette Gordon-Reed.
- Guest columnist and book reviewer for Dallas Morning News newspapers (1992-2023: 86 Op-Ed columns and book reviews) - - and as part of this, I have now authored or co-authored six Op-Ed essays that have made the front page of the Dallas Morning News’s Sunday Opinion Section ; Also have written extensively for the Dallas Business Journal (2006-2011: 58 columns), and the Park Cities People newspaper (2003-2012: 142 columns).
- Author: Cross-Examining History: A Lawyer Gets Answers From the Experts About Our Presidents (Bright Sky Press 2016, foreword by Ken Burns). Dust jacket endorsements by David McCullough, James A. Baker, III, Jon Meacham, Harold Holzer, Douglas Brinkley, Evan Thomas, and H.W. Brands.
- Author: Raising the Bar: The Crucial Role of the Lawyer in Society (TexasBarBooks 2012) (Foreword by former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh). Dust jacket endorsements by James A. Baker III, Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson, Jeffrey Toobin, Richard North Patterson, and Ken Starr.
- Author: 1939 – Baseball's Tipping Point, foreword by John Grisham, (Bright Sky Press 2005); and Baseball and the Baby Boomer, foreword by Frank Deford and Preface by Lou Brock (Bright Sky Press 2009).
- Chairman, Texas Business Hall of Fame Foundation 2004 2005.
- Director, World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth, (2006-2012; 2014-2020), and recipient of Mallon Circle Award for outstanding contribution to the Council.
- Advisory Director, Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility at SMU (2007-present).
- Author, Position Paper on "Tort Reform", successful 1994 George W. Bush for Governor Campaign.
- Media Member, Texas Baseball Hall of Fame (inducted 1997).
- No Kid Hungry campaign for the national non-profit Share Our Strength: In 2021-2022, was heavily involved and instrumental in raising over $1,500,000.00 to address childhood hunger in Texas.