Jeff Nussbaum published Undelivered: The Never-Heard Speeches that Would Have Rewritten History. He writes: “The seed of Undelivered was planted on Election Night, 2000, when I was a 25-year-old speechwriter for Al Gore, and was left holding three drafts of a speech that was never delivered: a victory speech, a concession speech, and a victory speech modified to include a defense of the electoral college (on the assumption that Gore would win the electoral college but lose the popular vote). This sent me on a 20-year quest to find and reconstruct the circumstances around historically significant undelivered speeches. In total, there are 15 chapters covering about 20 speeches. In each chapter, I recreate the moment in history where an alternate outcome was so likely that a speech was drafted to account for it, share the (often unseen) speech, and describe a little bit of what the speech demonstrated about the speechwriting process and leadership more broadly.”
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Class of 1997