This book for the most part is fairly easy to read. There are some part of the book where I got a bit lost, because of how it is written, especially how she cites. For example it will look something like this: "...office or profession ("of praise," Essays, P. 214)" If you are ok with having 5-7 citations like that in one page you should be fine. If you are not too comfortable with that method, it's still a good book and you should still read it.

Rhetoric by Olmstead covers pretty much everything you need to know about the history of rhetoric. And Olmstead does it in a way that is easy to grasp, she links earlist ideas on rhetoric (Aristotle) to other ideas on Rhetoric in history and disciplines (politics, law, etc.). It shows how Rhetoric changes throughout history; how and why Machiavelli's view are both different from and same as cicero and why it is different.

bottom line:

Great book! read it and reflect on it;