Thank You For Arguing

 Now that the semester is finally coming to an end, I wanted to do book summary and review. Throughout the whole book Jay Heinrichs walks you through a journey to understanding why rhetoric and persuasion are very important in everyday life. Heinrichs talks about all the different kinds of rhetoric and how people use them, he also quotes Aristotle a lot in this book.

In part one of the book, Heinrichs focuses on the basics of an argument. Every argument seems to have three basic steps. Stimulating the audiences emotions, changing the audiences opinion, and get the audience to do something. The author then proceeds to break down all the kinds of arguments and tips on how to deal with debates. It wraps up by teaching us about the very well known, ethos, pathos, logos. Heinrich then proceed to talk about the use of ethos, pathos, logos, and shows many examples of each. That is a very well known tactic in an argument.

In the second part of the book Jay Heinrich focuses on some tips about rhetoric that would help a person spice up their argument. He goes on to tell us all different types of rhetoric technique we can use to help strengthen our argument. One of the biggest way he does this is he focuses on the use of logical fallacies and how you can use those to keep the audience interested. Heinrich ends the second part of the book by talking about how to evaluate someones ethos by testing there values, practical wisdom, and disinterest.

In the last part of the book, Heinrich talks about more rhetorical tricks that may be useful. The author gives many useful tips on how to give a good apology and when the "right time" for that would be. Heinrich also discusses some tips over public speaking and how to appeal even more to your audience. 

This book overall did a very good job at teaching me about rhetoric and when to use it. It also taught me how to identify rhetoric when I see it and how to defend myself from it. If Americans were willing to spend more time learning about rhetoric in detail, Heinrich states, they'd be able to find more common ground and reverse the growing polarization and tribilzation of America society.