This book provided exactly what it said it would - a guide to critical thinking.
On finishing this book I think you will find yourself much more aware of the nature of thinking and reasoning. More importantly will be a heightened awareness of the often weak ways in which we are led by public figures and the media. If nothing else you can quickly recognise when a poor argument is being made and see through the ways in which this weakness can be covered with emotions etc. You will become highly aware (and dare I say, irritated) by the number of 'straw-man' arguments we see in the media and politics every single day.
Prepare though to read the early sections as a textbook - in the university course sense of the word. There is quite a bit of reasoning structure to get through which is critical for the rest of the book to make sense. For this reason though the structure of the book becomes a grind in places. This isn't to say that you aren't learning anything but I found that sometimes you are slogging through latin and algebra and then next chapter you are looking at fascinating and easily digestible real-life examples. This made me wonder if the distribution of material couldn't have been a little more even.
The author sensibly summarises the book with discussions on the limits of argument disection in 'polite' society. This I think is good because if we all spent our days breaking down every sentence said by other people then we would quickly grind to a halt. Oddly, and this is just my suspicion (you can break down the validity of my reasoning after reading), there seems to be a real partisan slant to a lot of the examples given. Not being from the U.S. I could have read this the wrong way but you may find yourself thinking the same. Not that this makes the examples any less appropriate but there did seem to be a bias that may make some people a little prickly, such that they end up missing the point.
If you read this along with some of the work by Arthur Schopenhauer on how to win arguments I think you will gain a lot on reasoning structure and also how to break this structure. All in all, a very valuable guide.
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Top reviews from other countries
daisycow
Critical guide to clear thinking
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 8, 2013InfernalByte
This guy needs to read How To Write Clearly, I read four pages and put it down.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 17, 2015
