I like the *idea* of this book - the book it *could* be, if you will - very much. But actually using it to teach a critical thinking course last year revealed serious flaws.
According to the ad copy and the first chapter or so, the overall goal is to present a coherent theory of argumentation, and of fallacies as failures to meet the obligations that theory imposes. A good argument has feature X, while a deviation from X is a type of fallacy, basically. This is a good idea for a way to structure a critical thinking textbook, and particularly for a way to work the fallacies into it so that they don't feel like an afterthought. Another feature I liked was the incorporation of that theory of argument into a larger theory of argumentative *conduct*, where we have obligations, not just to do our best to make our arguments as good as possible, but to be charitable and fair-minded toward our opponents as well. This is a point that needs to be stressed in any CT course and it's very good that Damer makes sure to do so at the outset.
However, the book has a number of serious flaws. For one thing, the "theory" of argumentation it's supposedly built around really isn't. The theory is little more than a list of five features a good argument should have (except when it doesn't; the Structural criterion doesn't apply to all arguments, at least not in a uniform way). Actually, more like eight features or so, since some of his five criteria are themselves bundles of distinct, only loosely related concepts. The reader expecting Damer to tie these features together in some way - to tell us what it is they have in common that allows them to play this role - is going to be disappointed; there is no serious, non-circular attempt to do this. Perhaps the average first-year student using this as a textbook wouldn't notice this, or wouldn't care, but it made teaching this book far less satisfying than I had hoped.
I wish to discuss three other notable flaws, each arguably less deep, but more pedagogically significant. First of all, many of the examples - both of types of fallacy, and of specific (supposed) instances of fallacies - simply aren't arguments, fallacious or otherwise. Not every instance of ambiguity, rationalization, misuse of a principle or wishful thinking involves an argument, but Damer sometimes uses a very large and unwieldy sledgehammer to make them look as though they do Similarly, several of Damer's specific examples, such as the landlord on page 200, refer to things as arguments that simply aren't (in this case the landlord's "argument" is better described as an explanation). In teaching a critical thinking class, it is of the first importance that students learn to distinguish between arguments and other bits of language, especially explanations, that are not arguments. Stronger students will understand the distinction intuitively but I found many of my students last year to be very ill-served by Damer in this regard. When I switched to Govier this past summer, the proportion of my students who consistently had problems distinguishing arguments from explanations dropped - I kid you not - from about 50% to *ZERO*.
Another very serious problem concerns Damer's explanation of Aristotelean categorical logic. Traditionally, the I statement ("Some S are P") is defined as meaning that at least one S is also a P, and similarly the O statement ("Some S are not P") as "At least one S is not a P". Damer, on the other hand, defines the I statement as meaning at least one S is a P *but not all of them are*, and similarly for the O statement. But then the I statement means "there's at least one S that's a P, and at least one that isn't" and so does the O statement; therefore, by Damer's definitions, the two are exactly equivalent! But Damer goes on to explain the traditional logical properties of the two, which are quite different, blissfully unaware that he's erased the distinction between them. As anyone who knows this material will quickly realize, this implies many logical absurdities, such as that "All S are P" and "No S are P" are equivalent (the "proof" of this, using the traditional rules of immediate inference plus Damer's inadvertent equation of the I and O statements, is very easy and left as an exercise for the reader). Getting something like this wrong is a recipe for confusing, not helping, the thinking of one's students.
The final problem I will mention lies with the title and emphasis of the book. Despite starting on the right foot, with an emphasis on mutual respect and intellectual honesty, the fact that most of the book is devoted to fallacies, combined with the title, creates an undesirable emphasis on finding fault with one's opponents rather than searching for common ground. Damer warns against this approach several times, but those warnings fly in the face of the message the title and overall contents of the book send. The current state of public discourse demands that books like this do all they can to discourage this approach, but instead Damer, at best, sends mixed messages on this point.
Add to this the problems with some of the examples that even the positive reviews acknowledge and you have a textbook that lays claim to some admirable ambitions, but doesn't live up to them and has some serious problems from a pedagogical standpoint into the bargain. Factor in its expense and you can do a very great deal better. As mentioned above, I switched to Trudy Govier's outstanding, albeit even pricier, A Practical Study of Argument, and got much better results in every way. For one thing, though Govier doesn't trumpet the fact the way Damer does, she is at least as successful as Damer (not that that's setting the bar very high) in building a genuine *system* of informal logic - and isn't that supposed to be Damer's main selling point?