“Once you find the right structure, perhaps it will be easier to find the right content.” That’s one of the key insights from this fourth book in the series The Syntax of Sports. Others include:

• The importance of being “radically inclusive”


• The power of defining something by what it is not


• The creative elegance of the word “as”

So join Professor Patrick Barry as he continues to share lessons from the popular writing course at the University of Michigan on which The Syntax of Sports is based. You’ll learn about language. You’ll learn about advocacy. And you’ll get to explore some illuminating connections between everything from the speeches of Winston Churchill, to the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci, to—perhaps most surprisingly—the face of NFL legend (and former University of Michigan quarterback) Tom Brady. 

An All-American soccer player in college who holds both a Ph.D. in English and a J.D., Professor Patrick Barry joined the University of Michigan Law School after clerking for two federal judges and working in legal clinics devoted to combatting human trafficking and reforming the foster care system. He is the author of several books on advocacy—including Good with Words: Writing and Editing and Notes on Nuance—and regularly puts on workshops for law firms, state governments, and nonprofit organizations. He also teaches at the University of Chicago Law School and has developed a series of online courses for the educational platform Coursera.