reference books for critical thinking

The 17 Best Books on Critical Thinking (to Read in 2024)

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The aim of improving your skill of critical thinking isn’t just to be able to reason and give logical arguments about a subject skillfully; your goal is to get to the right answer, to make the right decisions and choices for yourself and others.

Critical thinking helps you:

First , improve the quality of your decisions and judgments, and reevaluate your beliefs objectively.

The human mind is rarely objective. However, mastering the skill of critical thinking keeps your mind objective, at least about those things based on facts.

Take for example the beliefs you have about yourself; Some are based on facts, some on subjective (negative) opinions of others.

Second , become an independent thinker (learn to think for yourself); take ownership of your values, beliefs, judgments, and decisions.

Mastering critical thinking is essential , especially in our modern times, because you must:

• Make a tone of decisions every day;
• Think and come to the right conclusion fast;
• Solve (mostly alone) your problems and issues;
• Weigh carefully facts and information you receive from the dozens of sources you have at your disposal;
• Reevaluate your strategies, beliefs, and habits periodically.

Critical thinking is a skill that you must learn; you’re not born with it. To make your journey a little easier, we’ve gathered the best critical thinking books so you can learn from the masters. Get inspired to become a critical thinker in no time!

The best books on critical thinking:

Table of Contents

1. Critical Thinking: A Beginner’s Guide to Critical Thinking, Better Decision Making, and Problem Solving – Jennifer Wilson

2. wait, what: and life’s other essential questions- james e. ryan, 3. think smarter: critical thinking to improve problem-solving and decision-making skills – michael kallet, 4. brain power: learn to improve your thinking skills – karl albrecht, 5. the art of thinking clearly – rolf dobelli, 6. being logical: a guide to good thinking – d.q. mcinerny, 7. predictably irrational, revised and expanded edition: the hidden forces that shape our decisions – dr. dan ariely, 8. a more beautiful question: the power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas – warren berger, 9. a rulebook for arguments – anthony weston, 10. thinking, fast and slow – daniel kahneman, 11. the organized mind: thinking straight in the age of information overload – daniel j. levitin, 12. don’t believe everything you think: the 6 basic mistakes we make in thinking – thomas e. kida, 13. the decision book: 50 models for strategic thinking – mikael krogerus, roman tschäppeler, philip earnhart, jenny piening, 14. weaponized lies: how to think critically in the post-truth era – daniel j. levitin, 15. the demon-haunted world: science as a candle in the dark paperback – carl sagan, ann druyan, 16. how to think about weird things: critical thinking for a new age – theodore schick, lewis vaughn, 17. the 5 elements of effective thinking – edward b. burger, michael starbird.

As the title says, this book introduces you to the art of critical thinking. You’ll discover in it:

• What is critical thinking in practice,
• The different thought processes of critical thinking,
• How will your life be better mastering critical thinking,
• The things your brain needs to enjoy exercising critical thinking,
• Techniques you can use for solving problems,
• How to become a better decision maker, Strategies to use in your critical thinking processes,
• Ways to make good decisions when more people (not just you) are involved,
• Tips to frame your questions in order to maximize the efficiency of your critical thinking.

Wisdom comes from observation, learning, practice, and asking the right questions.

Using examples from history, politics, and his own personal life, James e Ryan shows you the importance of knowing how to:

• Ask questions and gain a better understanding,
• Get to be more curious,
• Push yourself to take action,
• Make your relationship stronger,
• And stay focused on the important things in life.

Related:  Critical Thinking Examples

The book starts with the five fundamental questions:

• Couldn’t we at least…?
• How can I help…?
• What truly matters….?

Knowing how to formulate, address, and deliver the right questions doesn’t leave room for misunderstandings, misinterpretations; asking the wrong questions will most probably give you a wrong answer.

This book (Wait, What?: And Life’s Other Essential Questions) will make you feel (more) courageous; after all, asking questions thanks courage. Asking yourself and others the right questions helps you make informed decisions and decisive action.

This book is a guide on how to train your brain to work even more for you. The author (Michael Kallet) is a critical thinking trainer and coach and gives you a practical set of tools and techniques for critical thinking in your day-to-day life and business.

If you want a clear, actionable step by step program to:

• Improve your critical thinking skills,
• A better understanding of complex problems and concepts,
• And how to put them in practice, then this book is for you.

Learn how to discover the real issues that need a solution, so you don’t waste your time in trying to solve imaginary problems. Increase your mental toughness, useful and productive thought.

In this book, Karl Albrecht shows you how to:

• Build your mental strength,
• Think more clearly logically and creative,
• Improve your memory,
• Solve problems,
• Make decisions more effectively.

Karl Albrecht talks in this book about the six functional abilities you need to have and become more adaptable and an innovative thinker.

The book is packed with practical exercises, fascinating illustrations, games, and puzzles to improve your mental capabilities.

The art of thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli is a window into human psychology and reasoning; how we:

• Make decisions;
• Evaluate choices and options;
• Develop cognitive biases.

This book helps you notice and recognize erroneous thinking and make better choices and decisions, change unwanted behaviors and habits.

It will change the way you think about yourself and life in general because you have in this book 99 short chapters with examples of the most common errors of judgment and how to rectify them.

If you wish to think more clearly, make better decisions and choices, reevaluate your biases, and feel better about yourself, this book is for you.

When you decide you want to study the field of logic more closely and improve your critical thinking, this book might be exactly what you need. It’s written clearly and concisely laying out for you the basic building blocks of logic and critical thinking.

The ancient civilizations understood better than us how important is to study logic and rhetoric. With the help of this book, you’ll bring back into your life these essential things that our modern society forgot and missed to teach you as a child.

Having increased logical thinking doesn’t mean to ignore your emotions. It means to start from your emotions and together, (emotions and logic) to take better decisions and see more clearly your choices to move forward in life.

“Predictably Irrational, The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions” is a book packed with examples of how:

• Irrational are our choices;
• We make decisions on impulse;
• We fool ourselves with optimism- “that must work for me.”

The author presents you, in this book, a large number of mental traps and flawed tendencies which can make your life harder.

After reading this book, you’ll be better informed about a variety of human flaws and how to avoid being trapped by irrational thinking. You’ll be better prepared to make decisions and choices based more on facts rather than subjective personal opinions.

Knowing how to ask the right questions is determining your success about many things in your life:

• Influencing others,
• Getting out of tricky situations,
• Reevaluating your beliefs,
• Offering yourself and others compassion,
• Overcoming mistakes and fears.

Warren Berger shows you in this book examples of people who are successful (partially) because they are experts in asking questions and don’t have preconceived ideas about what the answers should be.

This book helps you avoid wasting your innovative and brilliant ideas by presenting them in the same way over and over and getting nowhere over and over.

Asking yourself (and others) the right questions gives you the opportunity to display your ideas in a way that those around you feel compelled to listen.

This book is impressive because, Anthony Weston gives you a lot of excellent and practical advice, ordered in a logical and clear manner.

The examples in this book are realistic and useful, ranging from deductive to oral arguments, from argumentative essays to arguments by analogy.

Once you read this book you’ll want to have it on hand to sort out all sorts of situations you’ll encounter in your day-to-day life.

Daniel Kahneman, the author of this book, is a renowned psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in economics.

In this book, you will discover where you can and cannot trust your intuition; how to use the two systems that drive the way you think.

The first system is fast, intuitive, and emotional; the second system is slower, based on facts, and more logical.

The author argues that knowing how to use these two systems can make a huge difference in how you:

• Design your strategies,
• Predict consequences,
• Avoid cognitive biases,
• (and even simple things like) choosing the colors for your home office.

If you want to improve your critical thinking, know when you should use logic (instead of using emotions), and become mentally stronger this book is definitely for you.

Critical thinking can’t be created in a cluttered mind. It’s like trying to prepare a gourmet meal for your loved ones in a cramped and dysfunctional kitchen.

As if is not enough all the information you store in your mind from what you personally experience every day, our modern times forcefully adds to that information a lot of junk.

The book “The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload” by Daniel J. Levitin will help you sort out and organized your thoughts with the help of the four components in the human attentional system:

• Mind wandering mode;
• Central executive mode;
• Attentional filter;
• Attentional switch.

The book is showing you how you can improve your critical thinking and make better decisions concerning many areas of your life.

This book can (really) change your life if you’re dealing with procrastination, multitasking, the inability to switch off and block the outside world.

All in all, you’ll be better prepared to think straight in the age of information overload.

Thomas E. Kida talks in this book very elegantly about the six basic mistakes your thinking can make.

• The first mistake is being mesmerized by stories and ignoring the facts or statistics.
• The second mistake is searching to confirm what we already know or believe.
• The third mistake is to discount the role that chance and coincidence play in our life.
• The fourth mistake is believing that what you see it’s always the reality.
• The fifth mistake is to oversimplify things.
• The sixth mistake is to believe (trust) faulty memories.

This book can be for you an eye-opener into critical thinking, accepting who you are as you are, and improving the way you choose and make decisions.

Did you know you have a strategy for everything you do? From brushing your teeth to making new friends? From choosing a career to dealing with difficult people?

Considering you have a strategy for everything you do, it’s only logical the try to improve every day the way you develop your strategies and don’t leave it to chance, habit, or convenience.

“The Decision Book: 50 Models for Strategic Thinking” can improve your critical thinking and help you make your life easier and more enjoyable.

This book is interactive and provokes you to think about some of the strategies that don’t bring you the results you want.

It contains 58 illustrations offering summaries for known strategies such as the Rubber Band Model, the Personal Performance Model, and the Black Swan Model.

This book is for you if you want to improve the flexibility of your thinking, accept challenges more comfortable, feel more in control of your decisions and choices.

From this book, by Daniel Levitin, you’ll learn how to think critically and avoid being manipulated by things like misleading statistics and graphics, extreme view, or fake news.

The book contains three main sections:

• Evaluating numbers – how to read statistics and data to find out what lurks underneath and make a more objective analysis
• Evaluating words – how to assess the information you receive from experts, understanding the difference between incidence and prevalence, risk perceptions, and probabilistic thinking
• Evaluating the world – how to interpret scientific methods for different types of reasoning (induction, deduction, abduction)

This book will help you improve your critical thinking providing you with a lot of food for thought.

You know how in a criminal trial they call two experts that have divergent opinions on the same facts? Depending on whose side they are? This book teaches you to see the truth.

Although written in the 1990s, this bestseller book is still relevant in today’s society.

With both intelligence and compassion, Carl Sagan lays out the importance of education, logic, and science. This book will show you a ton of practical skills for assessing arguments, recognizing logical fallacies, and applying the scientific method.

Sagan felt that reason and logic could make the world a better place.

This book contains invaluable instructions on logic and reason using critical thinking, without being dull or difficult to understand.

Schick and Vaughn effectively laid out the key elements on how to assess evidence, sort through reasons, and recognize when a claim is likely to be accurate, making this book an absolute must-read for all students.

If you want to be better at decision-making based on sound evidence and argument, then this book is for you.

If you ever found yourself stuck on a problem, or having trouble in forming new ideas, this book will guide you in finding creative solutions to life’s difficult challenges.

This book emphasizes the value of effective thinking, how it can be mastered, and how to integrate it into everyday life.

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Carmen Jacob

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Philosophy Books

The best books on critical thinking, recommended by nigel warburton.

Thinking from A to Z by Nigel Warburton

Do you know your straw man arguments from your weasel words? Nigel Warburton , Five Books philosophy editor and author of Thinking from A to Z,  selects some of the best books on critical thinking—and explains how they will help us make better-informed decisions and construct more valid arguments.

Interview by Cal Flyn , Deputy Editor

Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World by Carl Bergstrom & Jevin West

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About The World — And Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling

Black Box Thinking: The Surprising Truth About Success by Matthew Syed

The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli

Critical Thinking: Your Guide to Effective Argument, Successful Analysis and Independent Study by Tom Chatfield

1 Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World by Carl Bergstrom & Jevin West

2 thinking, fast and slow by daniel kahneman, 3 factfulness: ten reasons we're wrong about the world — and why things are better than you think by hans rosling, 4 black box thinking: the surprising truth about success by matthew syed, 5 the art of thinking clearly by rolf dobelli, 6 critical thinking: your guide to effective argument, successful analysis and independent study by tom chatfield.

I t’s been just over two years since you explained to us what critical thinking is all about. Could you update us on any books that have come out since we first spoke?

Calling Bullshit by Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West started life as a course at the University of Washington. It is a book—a handbook really—written with the conviction that bullshit, particularly the kind that is circulated on the Internet, is damaging democracy , and that misinformation and disinformation can have very serious consequences. Bullshitters don’t care about truth. But truth is important, and this book shows why. It is focussed on examples from science and medicine, but ranges more widely too. It’s a lively read. It covers not just verbal bullshit, bullshit with statistics (particularly in relation to big data) and about causation, but also has a chapter on bullshit data visualisations that distract from the content they are about, or present that data in misleading ways. Like all good books on critical thinking this one includes some discussion of the psychology of being taken in by misleading contributions to public debate.

In How To Make the World Add Up , Tim Harford gives us ten rules for thinking better about numbers, together with a Golden Rule (‘Be curious’). Anyone who has listened to his long-running radio series More or Less will know how brilliant Tim is at explaining number-based claims – as I read it, I hallucinated Tim’s reassuring, sceptical, reasonable, amused, and  patient voice. He draws on a rich and fascinating range of examples to teach us (gently) how not to be taken in by statistics and poorly supported claims. There is some overlap with Calling Bullshit , but they complement each other. Together they provide an excellent training in how not to be bamboozled by data-based claims.

[end of update. The original interview appears below]

___________________________

We’re here to talk about critical thinking. Before we discuss your book recommendations, I wonder if you would first explain: What exactly is critical thinking, and when should we be using it?

There’s a whole cluster of things that go under the label ‘critical thinking’. There’s what you might call formal logic , the most extreme case of abstractions. For example take the syllogism: if all men are mortal, and Socrates is a man, you can deduce from that structure of arguments that Socrates is mortal. You could put anything in the slots of ‘men,’ ‘Socrates,’ ‘mortal’, and whatever you put in, the argument structure remains valid. If the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. That kind of logic, which can be represented using letters and signs rather than words, has its place. Formal logic is a quasi-mathematical (some would say mathematical) subject.

But that’s just one element of critical thinking. Critical thinking is broader, though it encompasses that. In recent years, it’s been very common to include discussion of cognitive biases—the psychological mistakes we make in reasoning and the tendencies we have to think in certain patterns which don’t give us reliably good results. That’s another aspect: focussing on the cognitive biases is a part of what’s sometimes called ‘informal logic’, the sorts of reasoning errors that people make, which can be described as fallacious. They’re not, strictly speaking, logical fallacies, always. Some of them are simply psychological tendencies that give us unreliable results.

The gambler’s fallacy is a famous one: somebody throwing a die that isn’t loaded has thrown it three times without getting a six, and then imagines that, by some kind of law of averages, the fourth time they’re more likely to get a six, because they haven’t yet got one yet. That’s just a bad kind of reasoning, because each time that you roll the dice, the odds are the same: there’s a one in six chance of throwing a six. There’s no cumulative effect and a dice doesn’t have a memory. But we have this tendency, or certainly gamblers often do, to think that somehow the world will even things out and give you a win if you’ve had a series of losses. That’s a kind of informal reasoning error that many of us make, and there are lots of examples like that.

I wrote a little book called Thinking from A to Z which was meant to name and explain a whole series of moves and mistakes in thinking. I included logic, some cognitive biases, some rhetorical moves, and also (for instance) the topic of pseudo-profundity, whereby people make seemingly deep statements that are in fact shallow. The classical example is to give a seeming paradox—to say, for example ‘knowledge is just a kind of ignorance,’ or ‘virtue is only achieved through vice.’ Actually, that’s just a rhetorical trick, and once you see it, you can generate any number of such ‘profundities’. I suppose that would fall under rhetoric, the art of persuasion: persuading people that you are a deeper thinker than you are. Good reasoning isn’t necessarily the best way to persuade somebody of something, and there are many devious tricks that people use within discussion to persuade people of a particular position. The critical thinker is someone who recognises the moves, can anatomise the arguments, and call them to attention.

So, in answer to your question: critical thinking is not just pure logic . It’s a cluster of things. But its aim is to be clear about what is being argued, what follows from the given evidence and arguments, and to detect any cognitive biases or rhetorical moves that may lead us astray.

Many of the terms you define and illustrate in Thinking from A to Z— things like ‘straw man’ arguments and ‘weasel words’—have been creeping into general usage. I see them thrown around on Twitter. Do you think that our increased familiarity with debate, thanks to platforms like Twitter, has improved people’s critical thinking or made it worse?

I think that improving your critical thinking can be quite difficult. But one of the ways of doing it is to have memorable labels, which can describe the kind of move that somebody’s making, or the kind of reasoning error, or the kind of persuasive technique they’re using.

For example, you can step back from a particular case and see that somebody’s using a ‘weak analogy’. Once you’re familiar with the notion of a weak analogy, it’s a term that you can use to draw attention to a comparison between two things which aren’t actually alike in the respects that somebody is implying they are. Then the next move of a critical thinker would be to point out the respects in which this analogy doesn’t hold, and so demonstrate how poor it is at supporting the conclusion provided. Or, to use the example of weasel words—once you know that concept, it’s easier to spot them and to speak about them.

Social media, particularly Twitter, is quite combative. People are often looking for critical angles on things that people have said, and you’re limited in words. I suspect that labels are probably in use there as a form of shorthand. As long as they’re used in a precise way, this can be a good thing. But remember that responding to someone’s argument with ‘that’s a fallacy’, without actually spelling out what sort of fallacy it is supposed to be, is a form of dismissive rhetoric itself.

There are also a huge number of resources online now which allow people to discover definitions of critical thinking terms. When I first wrote Thinking from A to Z , there weren’t the same number of resources available. I wrote it in ‘A to Z’ form, partly just as a fun device that allows for lots of cross references, but partly because I wanted to draw attention to the names of things. Naming the moves is important.

“People seem to get a kick out of the idea of sharing irrelevant features—it might be a birthday or it might be a hometown—with somebody famous. But so what?”

The process of writing the book improved my critical thinking quite a lot, because I had to think more precisely about what particular terms meant and find examples of them that were unambiguous. That was the hardest thing, to find clear-cut examples of the various moves, to illustrate them. I coined some of the names myself: there’s one in there which is called the ‘Van Gogh fallacy,’ which is the pattern of thought when people say: ‘Well, Van Gogh had red hair, was a bit crazy, was left-handed, was born on the 30th of March, and, what do you know, I share all those things’—which I do happen to do—‘and therefore I must be a great genius too.’

I love that. Well, another title that deals with psychological biases is the first critical thinking book that you want to discuss, Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow . Why did you choose this one?

This is an international bestseller by the Nobel Prize-winning behavioural economist—although he’s principally a psychologist—Daniel Kahneman. He developed research with Amos Tversky, who unfortunately died young. I think it would have been a co-written book otherwise. It’s a brilliant book that summarizes their psychological research on cognitive biases (or its patterns of thinking) which all of us are prone to, which aren’t reliable.

There is a huge amount of detail in the book. It summarizes a lifetime of research—two lifetimes, really. But Kahneman is very clear about the way he describes patterns of thought: as using either ‘System One’ or ‘System Two.’ System One is the fast, intuitive, emotional response to situations where we jump to a conclusion very quickly. You know: 2 + 2 is 4. You don’t think about it.

System Two is more analytical, conscious, slower, methodical, deliberative. A more logical process, which is much more energy consuming. We stop and think. How would you answer 27 × 17? You’d have to think really hard, and do a calculation using the System Two kind of thinking. The problem is that we rely on this System One—this almost instinctive response to situations—and often come out with bad answers as a result. That’s a framework within which a lot of his analysis is set.

I chose this book because it’s a good read, and it’s a book you can keep coming back to—but also because it’s written by a very important researcher in the area. So it’s got the authority of the person who did the actual psychological research. But it’s got some great descriptions of the phenomena he researches, I think. Anchoring, for instance. Do you know about anchoring?

I think so. Is that when you provide an initial example that shapes future responses? Perhaps you’d better explain it.

That’s more or less it. If you present somebody with an arbitrary number, psychologically, most people seem prone when you ask them a question to move in the direction of that number. For instance, there’s an experiment with judges. They were being asked off the cuff: What would be a good sentence for a particular crime, say shoplifting? Maybe they’d say it would be a six-month sentence for a persistent shoplifter.

But if you prime a judge by giving an anchoring number—if you ask, ‘Should the sentence for shoplifting be more than nine months?’ They’re more like to say on average that the sentence should be eight months than they would have been otherwise. And if you say, ‘Should it be punished by a sentence of longer than three months?’ they’re more likely to come down in the area of five , than they would otherwise.

So the way you phrase a question, by introducing these numbers, you give an anchoring effect. It sways people’s thinking towards that number. If you ask people if Gandhi was older than 114 years old when he died, people give a higher answer than if you just asked them: ‘How old was Gandhi when he died?’

I’ve heard this discussed in the context of charity donations. Asking if people will donate, say, £20 a month returns a higher average pledge than asking for £1 a month.

People use this anchoring technique often with selling wine on a list too. If there’s a higher-priced wine for £75, then somehow people are more drawn to one that costs £40 than they would otherwise have been. If  that was the most expensive one on the menu, they wouldn’t have been drawn to the £40 bottle, but just having seen the higher price, they seem to be drawn to a higher number. This phenomenon occurs in many areas.

And there are so many things that Kahneman covers. There’s the sunk cost fallacy, this tendency that we have when we give our energy, or money, or time to a project—we’re very reluctant to stop, even when it’s irrational to carry on. You see this a lot in descriptions of withdrawal from war situations. We say: ‘We’ve given all those people’s lives, all that money, surely we’re not going to stop this campaign now.’ But it might be the rational thing to do. All that money being thrown there, doesn’t mean that throwing more in that direction will get a good result. It seems that we have a fear of future regret that outweighs everything else. This dominates our thinking.

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What Kahneman emphasizes is that System One thinking produces overconfidence based on what’s often an erroneous assessment of a situation. All of us are subject to these cognitive biases, and that they’re extremely difficult to remove. Kahneman’s a deeply pessimistic thinker in some respects; he recognizes that even after years of studying these phenomena he can’t eliminate them from his own thinking. I interviewed him for a podcast once , and said to him: ‘Surely, if you teach people critical thinking, they can get better at eliminating some of these biases.’ He was not optimistic about that. I’m much more optimistic than him. I don’t know whether he had empirical evidence to back that up, about whether studying critical thinking can increase your thinking abilities. But I was surprised how pessimistic he was.

Interesting.

Unlike some of the other authors that we’re going to discuss . . .

Staying on Kahneman for a moment, you mentioned that he’d won a Nobel Prize, not for his research in psychology per se but for his influence on the field of economics . His and Tversky’s ground-breaking work on the irrationality of human behaviour and thinking forms the spine of a new field.

Let’s look at Hans Rosling’s book next, this is Factfulness . What does it tell us about critical thinking?

Rosling was a Swedish statistician and physician, who, amongst other things, gave some very popular TED talks . His book Factfulness , which was published posthumously—his son and daughter-in-law completed the book—is very optimistic, so completely different in tone from Kahneman’s. But he focuses in a similar way on the ways that people make mistakes.

We make mistakes, classically, in being overly pessimistic about things that are changing in the world. In one of Rosling’s examples he asks what percentage of the world population is living on less than $2 a day. People almost always overestimate that number, and also the direction in which things are moving, and the speed in which they’re moving. Actually, in 1966, half of the world’s population was in extreme poverty by that measure, but by 2017 it was only 9%, so there’s been a dramatic reduction in global poverty. But most people don’t realise this because they don’t focus on the facts, and are possibly influenced by what they may have known about the situation in the 1960s.

If people are asked what percentage of children are vaccinated against common diseases, they almost always underestimate it. The correct answer is a very high proportion, something like 80%. Ask people what the life expectancy for every child born today is, the global average, and again they get it wrong. It’s over 70 now, another surprisingly high figure. What Rosling’s done as a statistician is he’s looked carefully at the way the world is.

“Pessimists tend not to notice changes for the better”

People assume that the present is like the past, so when they’ve learnt something about the state of world poverty or they’ve learnt about health, they often neglect to take a second reading and see the direction in which things are moving, and the speed with which things are changing. That’s the message of this book.

It’s an interesting book; it’s very challenging. It may be over-optimistic. But it does have this startling effect on the readers of challenging widely held assumptions, much as Steven Pinker ‘s The Better Angels of Our Nature has done. It’s a plea to look at the empirical data, and not just assume that you know how things are now. But pessimists tend not to notice changes for the better. In many ways, though clearly not in relation to global warming and climate catastrophe, the statistics are actually very good for humanity.

That’s reassuring.

So this is critical thinking of a numerical, statistical kind. It’s a bit different from the more verbally-based critical thinking that I’ve been involved with. I’m really interested to have my my assumptions challenged, and Factfulness is a very readable book. It’s lively and thought-provoking.

Coming back to what you said about formal logic earlier, statistics is another dense subject which needs specialist training. But it’s one that has a lot in common with critical thinking and a lot of people find very difficult—by which I mean, it’s often counter-intuitive.

One of the big problems for an ordinary reader looking at this kind of book is that we are not equipped to judge the reliability of his sources, and so the reliability of the conclusions that he draws. I think we have to take it on trust and authority and hope that, given the division of intellectual labour, there are other statisticians looking at his work and seeing whether he was actually justified in drawing the conclusions that he drew. He made these sorts of public pronouncements for a long time and responded to critics.

But you’re right that there is a problem here. I believe that most people can equip themselves with tools for critical thinking that work in everyday life. They can learn something about cognitive biases; they can learn about reasoning and rhetoric, and I believe that we can put ourselves as members of a democracy in a position where we think critically about the evidence and arguments that are being presented to us, politically and in the press. That should be open to all intelligent people, I think. It is not a particularly onerous task to equip yourself with a basic tools of thinking clearly.

Absolutely. Next you wanted to talk about Five Books alumnus Matthew Syed ‘s Black Box Thinking .

Yes, quite a different book. Matthew Syed is famous as a former international table tennis player, but—most people probably don’t know this—he has a first-class degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) from Oxford as well.

This book is really interesting. It’s an invitation to think differently about failure. The title, Black Box Thinking, comes from the black boxes which are standardly included in every passenger aircraft, so that if an accident occurs there’s a recording of the flight data and a recording of the audio communications as the plane goes down. When there’s a crash, rescuers always aim to recover these two black boxes. The data is then analysed, the causes of the crash, dissected and scrutinized, and the information shared across the aeronautic industry and beyond.

Obviously, everybody wants to avoid aviation disasters because they’re so costly in terms of loss of human life. They undermine trust in the whole industry. There’s almost always some kind of technical or human error that can be identified, and everybody can learn from particular crashes. This is a model of an industry where, when there is a failure, it’s treated as a very significant learning experience, with the result that airline travel has become a very safe form of transport.

This contrasts with some other areas of human endeavour, such as, sadly, much of healthcare, where the information about failures often isn’t widely shared. This can be for a number of reasons: there may be a fear of litigation—so if a surgeon does something unorthodox, or makes a mistake, and somebody as a result doesn’t survive an operation, the details of exactly what happened on the operating table will not be widely shared, typically, because there is this great fear of legal comeback.

The hierarchical aspects of the medical profession may have a part to play here, too. People higher up in the profession are able to keep a closed book, and not share their mistakes with others, because it might be damaging to their careers for people to know about their errors. There has been, historically anyway, a tendency for medical negligence and medical error, to be kept very quiet, kept hidden, hard to investigate.

“You can never fully confirm an empirical hypothesis, but you can refute one by finding a single piece of evidence against it”

What Matthew Syed is arguing is that we need to take a different attitude to failure and see it as the aviation industry does. He’s particularly interested in this being done within the healthcare field, but more broadly too. It’s an idea that’s come partly from his reading of the philosopher Karl Popper, who described how science progresses not by proving theories true, but by trying to disprove them. You can never fully confirm an empirical hypothesis, but you can refute one by finding a single piece of evidence against it. So, in a sense, the failure of the hypothesis is the way by which science progresses: conjecture followed by refutation, not hypothesis followed by confirmation.

As Syed argues, we progress in all kinds of areas is by making mistakes. He was a superb table-tennis player, and he knows that every mistake that he made was a learning experience, at least potentially, a chance to improve. I think you’d find the same attitude among musicians, or in areas where practitioners are very attentive to the mistakes that they make, and how those failures can teach them in a way that allows them to make a leap forward. The book has a whole range of examples, many from industry, about how different ways of thinking about failure can improve the process and the output of particular practices.

When we think of bringing up kids to succeed, and put emphasis on avoiding failure, we may not be helping them develop. Syed’s argument is that we should make failure a more positive experience, rather than treat it as something that’s terrifying, and always to be shied away from. If you’re trying to achieve success, and you think, ‘I have to achieve that by accumulating other successes,’ perhaps that’s the wrong mindset to achieve success at the higher levels. Perhaps you need to think, ‘Okay, I’m going to make some mistakes, how can I learn from this, how can I share these mistakes, and how can other people learn from them too?’

That’s interesting. In fact, just yesterday I was discussing a book by Atul Gawande, the surgeon and New Yorker writer, called The Checklist Manifesto . In that, Gawande also argues that we should draw from the success of aviation, in that case, the checklists that they run through before take-off and so on, and apply it to other fields like medicine. A system like this is aiming to get rid of human error, and I suppose that’s what critical thinking tries to do, too: rid us of the gremlins in machine.

Well, it’s also acknowledging that when you make an error, it can have disastrous consequence. But you don’t eliminate errors just by pretending they didn’t occur. With the Chernobyl disaster , for instance, there was an initial unwillingness to accept the evidence in front of people’s eyes that a disaster had occurred, combined with a fear of being seen to have messed up. There’s that tendency to think that everything’s going well, a kind of cognitive bias towards optimism and a fear of being responsible for error, but it’s also this unwillingness to see that in certain areas, admission of failure and sharing of the knowledge that mistakes have occurred is the best way to minimize failure in the future.

Very Beckettian . “Fail again. Fail better.”

Absolutely. Well, shall we move onto to Rolf Dobelli’s 2013 book, The Art of Thinking Clearly ?

Yes. This is quite a light book in comparison with the others. It’s really a summary of 99 moves in thinking, some of them psychological, some of them logical, some of them social. What I like about it is that he uses lots of examples. Each of the 99 entries is pretty short, and it’s the kind of book you can dip into. I would think it would be very indigestible to read it from cover to cover, but it’s a book to keep going back to.

I included it because it suggests you can you improve your critical thinking by having labels for things, recognising the moves, but also by having examples which are memorable, through which you can learn. This is an unpretentious book. Dobelli doesn’t claim to be an original thinker himself; he’s a summariser of other people’s thoughts. What he’s done is brought lots of different things together in one place.

Just to give a flavour of the book: he’s got a chapter on the paradox of choice that’s three pages long called ‘Less is More,’ and it’s the very simple idea that if you present somebody with too many choices, rather than freeing them and improving their life and making them happier, it wastes a lot of their time, even destroys the quality of their life.

“If you present somebody with too many choices, it wastes a lot of their time”

I saw an example of this the other day in the supermarket. I bumped into a friend who was standing in front of about 20 different types of coffee. The type that he usually buys wasn’t available, and he was just frozen in this inability to make a decision between all the other brands that were in front of him. If there’d only been one or two, he’d have just gone for one of those quickly.

Dobelli here is summarising the work of psychologist Barry Schwartz who concluded that generally, a broader selection leads people to make poorer decisions for themselves. We think going into the world that what we need is more choice, because that’ll allow us to do the thing we want to do, acquire just the right consumable, or whatever. But perhaps just raising that possibility, the increased number of choices will lead us to make poorer choices than if we had fewer to choose between.

Now, that’s the descriptive bit, but at the end of this short summary, he asks ‘So what can you do about this practically?’ His answer is that you should think carefully about what you want before you look at what’s on offer. Write down the things you think you want and stick to them. Don’t let yourself be swayed by further choices. And don’t get caught up in a kind of irrational perfectionism. This is not profound advice, but it’s stimulating. And that’s typical of the book.

You can flip through these entries and you can take them or leave them. It’s a kind of self-help manual.

Oh, I love that. A critical thinking self-help book .

It really is in that self-help genre, and it’s nicely done. He gets in and out in a couple of pages for each of these. I wouldn’t expect this to be on a philosophy reading list or anything like that, but it’s been an international bestseller. It’s a clever book, and I think it’s definitely worth dipping into and coming back to. The author is not claiming that it is the greatest or most original book in the world; rather, it’s just a book that’s going to help you think clearly. That’s the point.

Absolutely. Let’s move to the final title, Tom Chatfield’s Critical Thinking: Your Guide to Effective Argument, Successful Analysis and Independent Study . We had Tom on Five Books many moons ago to discuss books about computer games . This is rather different. What makes it so good?

Well, this is a different kind of book. I was trying to think about somebody reading this interview who wants to improve their thinking. Of the books I’ve discussed, the ones that are most obviously aimed at that are Black Box Thinking , the Dobelli book, and Tom Chatfield’s Critical Thinking . The others are more descriptive or academic. But this book is quite a contrast with the Dobelli’s. The Art of Thinking Clearly is a very short and punchy book, while Tom’s is longer, and more of a textbook. It includes exercises, with summaries in the margins, it’s printed in textbook format. But that shouldn’t put a general reader off, because I think it’s the kind of thing you can work through yourself and dip into.

It’s clearly written and accessible, but it is designed to be used on courses as well. Chatfield teaches a point, then asks you to test yourself to see whether you’ve learnt the moves that he’s described. It’s very wide-ranging: it includes material on cognitive biases as well as more logical moves and arguments. His aim is not simply to help you think better, and to structure arguments better, but also to write better. It’s the kind of book that you might expect a good university to present to the whole first year intake, across a whole array of courses. But I’m including it here more as a recommendation for the autodidact. If you want to learn to think better: here is a course in the form of a book. You can work through this on your own.

It’s a contrast with the other books as well, so that’s part of my reason for putting it in there, so there’s a range of books on this list.

Definitely. I think Five Books readers, almost by definition, tend towards autodidacticism, so this is a perfect book recommendation. And, finally, to close: do you think that critical thinking is something that more people should make an effort to learn? I suppose the lack of it might help to explain the rise of post-truth politics.

It’s actually quite difficult to teach critical thinking in isolation. In the Open University’s philosophy department, when I worked there writing and designing course materials, we decided in the end to teach critical thinking as it arose in teaching other content: by stepping back from time to time to look at the critical thinking moves being made by philosophers, and the critical thinking moves a good student might make in response to them. Pedagogically, that often works much better than attempting to teach critical thinking as a separate subject in isolation.

This approach can work in scientific areas too. A friend of mine has run a successful university course for zoologists on critical thinking, looking at correlation and cause, particular types of rhetoric that are used in write ups and experiments, and so on, but all the time driven by real examples from zoology. If you’ve got some subject matter, and you’ve got examples of people reasoning, and you can step back from it, I think this approach can work very well.

But in answer to your question, I think that having some basic critical thinking skills is a prerequisite of being a good citizen in a democracy . If you are too easily swayed by rhetoric, weak at analysing arguments and the ways that people use evidence, and prone to all kinds of biases that you are unaware of, how can you engage politically? So yes, all of us can improve our critical thinking skills, and I do believe that that is an aspect of living the examined life that Socrates was so keen we all should do.

December 4, 2020

Five Books aims to keep its book recommendations and interviews up to date. If you are the interviewee and would like to update your choice of books (or even just what you say about them) please email us at [email protected]

Nigel Warburton

Nigel Warburton is a freelance philosopher, writer and host of the podcast Philosophy Bites . Featuring short interviews with the world's best philosophers on bite-size topics, the podcast has been downloaded more than 40 million times. He is also our philosophy editor here at Five Books , where he has been interviewing other philosophers about the best books on a range of philosophy topics since 2013 (you can read all the interviews he's done here: not all are about philosophy). In addition, he's recommended books for us on the best introductions to philosophy , the best critical thinking books, as well as some of the key texts to read in the Western canon . His annual recommendations of the best philosophy books of the year are among our most popular interviews on Five Books . As an author, he is best known for his introductory philosophy books, listed below:

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Best Books on Critical Thinking

Dive into the realm of logic and reason with this collection – the most recommended books on critical thinking, curated based on frequent recommendations from leading book blogs and publications..

100 Best Critical Thinking Books of All Time

We've researched and ranked the best critical thinking books in the world, based on recommendations from world experts, sales data, and millions of reader ratings. Learn more

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Kahneman | 5.00

Barack Obama A few months ago, Mr. Obama read “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” by Daniel Kahneman, about how people make decisions — quick, instinctive thinking versus slower, contemplative deliberation. For Mr. Obama, a deliberator in an instinctive business, this may be as instructive as any political science text. (Source)

Bill Gates [On Bill Gates's reading list in 2012.] (Source)

Marc Andreessen Captivating dive into human decision making, marred by inclusion of several/many? psychology studies that fail to replicate. Will stand as a cautionary tale? (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

Factfulness

Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

Hans Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund, Ola Rosling | 4.62

Barack Obama As 2018 draws to a close, I’m continuing a favorite tradition of mine and sharing my year-end lists. It gives me a moment to pause and reflect on the year through the books I found most thought-provoking, inspiring, or just plain loved. It also gives me a chance to highlight talented authors – some who are household names and others who you may not have heard of before. Here’s my best of 2018... (Source)

Bill Gates This was a breakthrough to me. The framework Hans enunciates is one that took me decades of working in global development to create for myself, and I could have never expressed it in such a clear way. I’m going to try to use this model moving forward. (Source)

Nigel Warburton It’s an interesting book, it’s very challenging. It may be over-optimistic. But it does have this startling effect on the readers of challenging widely held assumptions. It’s a plea to look at the empirical data, and not just assume that you know how things are now. (Source)

The Demon-haunted World

Science As a Candle in the Dark

Carl Sagan | 4.54

James Randi First of all, Carl was my very good friend, and we had a lot of confidences over the years. He was the epitome of the scientific mind and the scientific thinker. In The Demon-Haunted World, one of his later books, he investigates pseudoscience, frauds and fakes, and the mistakes that scientists made over the years. It’s very comprehensive. He had a whole chapter devoted to “Carlos” – or Jose... (Source)

Philip Plait He holds your hand and shows you the wonders of science and the universe. The Demon-Haunted World is probably his best book. (Source)

Dallas Campbell @TheChilterns Even if you profoundly disagree with Clarke, it’s very detailed. The classic is of course ‘The Demon Haunted World’ by Carl Sagan. When I’m Prime Minister it will be compulsory reading at school! Best book on what science is/isn’t and why we think the way we do. 👍 (Source)

The Psychology of Persuasion

Robert B. Cialdini | 4.53

Charles T. Munger Robert Cialdini has had a greater impact on my thinking on this topic than any other scientist. (Source)

Dan Ariely It covers a range of ways in which we end up doing things, and how we don’t understand why we’re doing them. (Source)

Max Levchin [Max Levchin recommended this book as an answer to "What business books would you advise young entrepreneurs read?"] (Source)

A Brief History of Humankind

Yuval Noah Harari | 4.52

Richard Branson One example of a book that has helped me to #ReadToLead this year is Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. While the book came out a few years ago now, I got around to it this year, and am very glad I did. I’ve always been fascinated in what makes humans human, and how people are constantly evolving, changing and growing. The genius of Sapiens is that it takes some daunting,... (Source)

Reid Hoffman A grand theory of humanity. (Source)

Barack Obama eval(ez_write_tag([[250,250],'theceolibrary_com-leader-2','ezslot_7',164,'0','1'])); Fact or fiction, the president knows that reading keeps the mind sharp. He also delved into these non-fiction reads. (Source)

Man's Search for Meaning

Viktor E. Frankl, William J. Winslade, et al. | 4.50

Tony Robbins Another book that I’ve read dozens of times. It taught me that if you change the meaning, you change everything. Meaning equals emotion, and emotion equals life. (Source)

Jimmy Fallon I read it while spending ten days in the ICU of Bellevue hospital trying to reattach my finger from a ring avulsion accident in my kitchen. It talks about the meaning of life, and I believe you come out a better person from reading it. (Source)

Dustin Moskovitz [Dustin Moskovitz recommended this book on Twitter.] (Source)

Predictably Irrational

The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

Dan Ariely | 4.48

Nick Harkaway Predictably Irrational is an examination of the way in which we make decisions irrationally, and how that irrationality can be predicted. (Source)

Jonah Lehrer Dan Ariely is a very creative guy and was able to take this basic idea, that humans are irrational, and mine it in a million different directions. (Source)

The Black Swan

The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Nassim Nicholas Taleb | 4.48

Jeff Bezos [From the book "The Everything Store: and the Age of Amazon"] “The scholar argues that people are wired to see patterns in chaos while remaining blind to unpredictable events, with massive consequences. Experimentation and empiricism trumps the easy and obvious narrative,” Stone writes. (Source)

James Altucher And throw in “The Black Swan” and “Fooled by Randomness”. “Fragile” means if you hit something might break. “Resilient” means if you hit something, it will stay the same. On my podcast Nassim discusses “Antifragility” – building a system, even on that works for you on a personal level, where you if you harm your self in some way it becomes stronger. That podcast changed my life He discusses... (Source)

Freakonomics

A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Stephen J. Levitt, Steven D.; Dubner | 4.45

Malcolm Gladwell I don’t need to say much here. This book invented an entire genre. Economics was never supposed to be this entertaining. (Source)

Daymond John I love newer books like [this book]. (Source)

James Altucher [James Altucher recommended this book on the podcast "The Tim Ferriss Show".] (Source)

How to Read a Book

The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren | 4.45

Sergey Brin had “How to Read a Book” by Mortimer J. Adler as one of his most recommended books. (Source)

Ben Chestnut I also love How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler. I’m teaching its tips to my children while they’re young, so they can consume books much faster and have more fun reading. (Source)

Kevin Systrom [The author's] thesis is that the most important part of reading a book is to actually read the table of contents and familiarize yourself with the major structure of the book. (Source)

Don't have time to read the top Critical Thinking books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

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The Tipping Point

How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

Malcolm Gladwell | 4.38

Kevin Rose Bunch of really good information in here on how to make ideas go viral. This could be good to apply to any kind of products or ideas you may have. Definitely, check out The Tipping Point, which is one of my favorites. (Source)

Seth Godin Malcolm Gladwell's breakthrough insight was to focus on the micro-relationships between individuals, which helped organizations realize that it's not about the big ads and the huge charity balls... it's about setting the stage for the buzz to start. (Source)

Andy Stern I think that when we talk about making change, it is much more about macro change, like in policy. This book reminds you that at times when you're building big movements, or trying to elect significant decision-makers in politics, sometimes it's the little things that make a difference. Ever since the book was written, we've become very used to the idea of things going viral unexpectedly and then... (Source)

Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

Richard H. Thaler | 4.37

Dan Ariely Nudge is a very important book. One of the reasons Nudge is so important is because it’s taking these ideas and applying them to the policy domain. Here are the mistakes we make. Here are the ways marketers are trying to influence us. Here’s the way we might be able to fight back. If policymakers understood these principles, what could they do? The other important thing about the book is that it... (Source)

Eric Ries A pioneer in behavioral economics and just recently awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics, his classic book on how to make better decisions. (Source)

Ryan Holiday This might feel like a weird book to include, but I think it presents another side of strategy that is too often forgotten. It’s not always about bold actors and strategic thrusts. Sometimes strategy is about subtle influence. Sometimes it is framing and small tweaks that change behavior. We can have big aims, but get there with little moves. This book has excellent examples of that kind of... (Source)

Asking the Right Questions

A Guide to Critical Thinking

M. Neil Browne, Stuart M. Keeley | 4.36

Enlightenment Now

The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

Steven Pinker | 4.35

Bill Gates Pinker is at his best when he analyzes historic trends and uses data to put the past into context. I was already familiar with a lot of the information he shares—especially about health and energy—but he understands each subject so deeply that he’s able to articulate his case in a way that feels fresh and new. I love how he’s willing to dive deep into primary data sources and pull out unexpected... (Source)

Yuval Noah Harari There is of course much to argue about, but that’s what makes this book so interesting. (Source)

Sam Harris [Sam Harris picked this book as the first book in his Book Club.] (Source)

The New Psychology of Success

Carol S. Dweck | 4.34

Tony Robbins [Tony Robbins recommended this book on the podcast "The Tim Ferriss Show".] (Source)

Bill Gates One of the reasons I loved Mindset is because it’s solutions-oriented. In the book’s final chapter, Dweck describes the workshop she and her colleagues have developed to shift students from a fixed to a growth mindset. These workshops demonstrate that ‘just learning about the growth mindset can cause a big shift in the way people think about themselves and their lives. (Source)

The Story of Success

Malcolm Gladwell | 4.34

Bill Gates [On Bill Gates's reading list in 2011.] (Source)

James Altucher Gladwell is not the first person to come up with the 10,000 hour rule. Nor is he the first person to document what it takes to become the best in the world at something. But his stories are so great as he explains these deep concepts. How did the Beatles become the best? Why are professional hockey players born in January, February and March? And so on. (Source)

Cat Williams-Treloar The books that I've talked the most about with friends and colleagues over the years are the Malcolm Gladwell series of novels. Glorious stories that mix science, behaviours and insight. You can't go wrong with the "The Tipping Point", "Outliers", "Blink" or "David & Goliath". (Source)

Bad Science

Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks

Ben Goldacre | 4.33

Timothy Ferriss I agree wholeheartedly with a lot of the co-opted science, which people can read a book called Bad Science, which is by a doctor named Ben Goldacre. It’s great. (Source)

Tim Harford This book changed the way I thought about my own writing and it changed the way I thought about the world. It really is one of the best books I have ever read. (Source)

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore It’s just a brilliant book, and he’s a fearless defender of science. (Source)

The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

Malcolm Gladwell | 4.33

Mike Shinoda I know most of the guys in the band read [this book]. (Source)

Marillyn Hewson CEO Marilyn Hewson recommends this book because it helped her to trust her instincts in business. (Source)

A Field Guide to Lies

Critical Thinking with Statistics and the Scientific Method

Daniel J. Levitin | 4.28

The Art of Thinking Clearly

Better Thinking, Better Decision

dobelli rolf | 4.28

Robert Cialdini Dobelli examines our most common decision-making failings with engaging eloquence and describes how to counter them with instructive good sense. (Source)

Nigel Warburton This is an unpretentious book. Dobelli doesn’t claim to be an original thinker himself. He’s a summariser of other people’s thoughts. What he’s done is brought lots of different things together in one place. Each of the 99 entries is pretty short, and it’s the kind of book to dip into. (Source)

Antifragile

Things That Gain from Disorder

Nassim Nicholas Taleb | 4.27

James Altucher You ask about success. To be successful you have to avoid being “fragile” – the idea that if something hurts you, you let collapse completely. You also have to avoid simply being resilient. Bouncing back is not enough. Antifragile is when something tries to hurt you and you come back stronger. That is real life business. That is real life success. Nassim focuses on the economy. But when I read... (Source)

Marvin Liao eval(ez_write_tag([[250,250],'theceolibrary_com-leader-2','ezslot_7',164,'0','1'])); My list would be (besides the ones I mentioned in answer to the previous question) both business & Fiction/Sci-Fi and ones I personally found helpful to myself. The business books explain just exactly how business, work & investing are in reality & how to think properly & differentiate yourself. On... (Source)

Vlad Tenev The general concept is applicable to many fields beyond biology, for instance finance, economics and monetary policy. (Source)

The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking

Edward B. Burger | 4.27

Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)

Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts

Mark Haddo | 4.25

Peter Attia A book about cognitive dissonance that looks at common weaknesses and biases in human thinking. Peter wants to ensure he goes through life without being too sure of himeself, and this book helps him to recalibrate. (Source)

Ryan Holiday Cognitive Dissonance is one of the most powerful and delusionary forces in the world. (Source)

David Kramaley When asked what books he would recommend to youngsters interested in his professional path, David mentioned Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me). (Source)

Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

Cal Newport | 4.24

Marvin Liao The Joy of Not Working (Zelinkski), Flash Foresight (Burrus), The Art of Worldly Wisdom (Gracian), Sapiens (Yuval), The End of Jobs (Pearson), Deep Work (Newport), Sovereign Individual (Davidson), The Fourth Economy (Davison) & The Monk & the Riddle (Komisar). Every single one of these books completely changed how I looked at everything in the world & literally pushed my life in a new direction.... (Source)

Daniel Pink As automation and outsourcing reshape the workplace, what new skill do we need? The ability to do deep work. Cal Newport's exciting new book is an introduction and guide to the kind of intense concentration in a distraction-free environment that results in fast, powerful learning and performance. Think of it as calisthenics for your mind-and start your exercise program today. (Source)

Seth Godin Cal Newport is a clear voice in a sea of noise, bringing science and passion in equal measure. (Source)

Guns, Germs and Steel

The Fates of Human Societies

Jared Diamond Ph.D. | 4.24

Bill Gates Fascinating.... Lays a foundation for understanding human history. (Source)

Daniel Ek A brilliant Pulitzer Prize-winning book about how the modern world was formed, analyzing how societies developed differently on different continents. (Source)

Yuval Noah Harari A book of big questions, and big answers. The book turned me from a historian of medieval warfare into a student of humankind. (Source)

A Rulebook for Arguments

Anthony Weston | 4.23

The God Delusion

Richard Dawkins | 4.22

Susan Jacoby Richard Dawkins is very funny. One of the reasons for reading The God Delusion is that it will disabuse you of the idea – which is a common stereotype of atheists – that they are utterly humourless. You hear this over and over again. I’m often invited to college campuses to give lectures, and often they’re religious schools – not fundamentalist schools, but colleges of a historically religious... (Source)

Vote Dem For The Planet @KimBledsoe14 @Goodbye_Jesus @Ian313f There were a lot of rebels and drifters in those days against the repressive regime. They had followers. Have you read “The God Delusion”? Great book. (Source)

Antonio Eram This book was recommended by Antonio when asked for titles he would recommend to young people interested in his career path. (Source)

Fooled by Randomness

The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

Nassim Nicholas Taleb | 4.22

Howard Marks Really about how much randomness there is in our world. (Source)

Anant Jain The five-book series, "Incerto", by Nassim Nicholas Taleb has had a profound impact on how I think about the world. There’s some overlap across the books — but you'll likely find the repetition helpful in retaining the content better. (Source)

Emotional Intelligence

Why It Can Matter More Than IQ

Daniel Goleman | 4.22

Drew Houston It’s nonfiction, but it spelled out something that I just didn’t know you could kind of break down in a logical way. And, suddenly, I had this understanding about the world that I didn’t have before. (Source)

Sharon Salzberg [Sharon Salzberg recommended this book on the podcast "The Tim Ferriss Show".] (Source)

Roxana Bitoleanu [One of the books recommends to young people interested in her career path.] (Source)

Amusing Ourselves to Death

Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

Neil Postman, Andrew Postman | 4.22

Austin Kleon Earlier this year Postman’s son Andrew wrote an op-ed with the title, “My dad predicted Trump in 1985 — it’s not Orwell, he warned, it’s Brave New World.” Postman wrote: “What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.” (Source)

Steve Lance Neil Postman took the work of Marshall McLuhan – who was putting out early theories on media – and built on them. However, Postman was far more observant and empirical about the trends occurring in the media landscape. The trends which he identifies in Amusing Ourselves to Death, written in the 1980s, have since all come true. For example, he predicted that if you make news entertaining, then... (Source)

Kara Nortman @andrewchen Also a great book on the topic - Amusing Ourselves to Death https://t.co/yWLBxKumLQ (Source)

You Are Not So Smart

Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself

David McRaney | 4.21

Jessica Flitter Honestly, almost every major topic that we cover in an introductory social psychology chapter is covered in the book. It makes psychology real: this isn’t something that theoretically exists in the classroom. It exists every single day. That’s why I love this book. (Source)

How Not to Be Wrong

The Power of Mathematical Thinking

Jordan Ellenberg | 4.20

Bill Gates The writing is funny, smooth, and accessible -- not what you might expect from a book about math. What Ellenberg has written is ultimately a love letter to math. If the stories he tells add up to a larger lesson, it’s that 'to do mathematics is to be, at once, touched by fire and bound by reason' -- and that there are ways in which we’re all doing math, all the time. (Source)

Auston Bunsen I’ve got a few, one book that really impacted me early on as someone coming from a middle-class family was “Rich dad, Poor dad”. Since then I’ve read many books but one that really stands out is “How not to be wrong” by Jordan Ellenberg which really reignited my appetite & appreciation for math. (Source)

Nick Ganju Written for an audience of people who have historically been intimidated by math [...] and introduces things in a very simple way, and then works up to more complex concepts. (Source)

"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"

Adventures of a Curious Character

Richard P. Feynman, Ralph Leighton, Edward Hutchings, Albert R. Hibbs | 4.19

Sergey Brin Brin told the Academy of Achievement: "Aside from making really big contributions in his own field, he was pretty broad-minded. I remember he had an excerpt where he was explaining how he really wanted to be a Leonardo [da Vinci], an artist and a scientist. I found that pretty inspiring. I think that leads to having a fulfilling life." (Source)

Larry Page Google co-founder has listed this book as one of his favorites. (Source)

Peter Attia The book I’ve recommended most. (Source)

Critical Thinking

Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life

Richard Paul, Linda Elder | 4.19

How to Think About Weird Things

Critical Thinking for a New Age

Theodore Schick, Lewis Vaughn | 4.19

Stephen Law Carefully and critically, aware of the various cognitive biases to which we are, unfortunately, all very prone. This book explains various fallacies to watch out for; the Slippery Slope, the Straw Man fallacy, the Post Hoc fallacy, and so on. It points out all of the problems that we’ve already looked at so far as anecdotal evidence is concerned. It includes many impressive case studies and... (Source)

The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe

How to Know What's Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake

Steven Novella, Bob Novella - contributor, et al | 4.19

Black Box Thinking

Why Some People Never Learn from Their Mistakes - But Some Do

Matthew Syed | 4.18

Richard Branson [...] highlights the need for a growth mindset in life. It advocates for changing attitudes towards failure, and understanding that the only way we learn is by trying things and altering our behaviour based on the results. It’s an attitude we found incredibly valuable during my highlight of the year, completing the Virgin Strive Challenge. (Source)

Daniel Ek Since reading this book, I’ve literally incorporated this approach to problem-solving into every day. (Source)

Nigel Warburton As Syed argues, we progress in all kinds of areas is by making mistakes. He was a superb table-tennis player, and he knows that every mistake that he made was a learning experience, at least potentially, a chance to improve. I think you’d find the same attitude among musicians, or in areas where practitioners are very attentive to the mistake that they make, and how those failures can teach them... (Source)

How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - Second Edition with a New Chapter by the Author

Darrell Huff and Irving Gei | 4.17

Bill Gates I picked this one up after seeing it on a Wall Street Journal list of good books for investors. It was first published in 1954, but it doesn’t feel dated (aside from a few anachronistic examples—it has been a long time since bread cost 5 cents a loaf in the United States). In fact, I’d say it’s more relevant than ever. One chapter shows you how visuals can be used to exaggerate trends and give... (Source)

Tobi Lütke We all live in Malcolm’s world because the shipping container has been hugely influential in history. (Source)

Jason Zweig This is a terrific introduction to critical thinking about statistics, for people who haven’t taken a class in statistics. (Source)

A Brief History of Tomorrow

Yuval Noah Harari | 4.16

Richard Branson I certainly wouldn’t consider myself a big reader of paleontology or anthropology – not good words for us dyslexics! – but I enjoy learning about how society has unfolded and history has developed in an exciting, easy to read way. The sequel, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, is a fascinating look into the future too. While these aren’t traditional business or leadership books, they are all... (Source)

Bill Gates Harari’s new book is as challenging and readable as Sapiens. Rather than looking back, as Sapiens does, it looks to the future. I don’t agree with everything the author has to say, but he has written a thoughtful look at what may be in store for humanity. (Source)

Vinod Khosla Not that I agree with all of it, but it is still mind-bending speculation about our future as a follow-up to a previous favorite, Sapiens. It’s directionally right. (Source)

Why People Believe Weird Things

Michael Shermer, Stephen Jay Gould | 4.16

Richard Wiseman A wider perspective on the paranormal, looking at UFOs and conspiracies – where people link up ideas which aren’t necessarily connected to one another. (Source)

The Selfish Gene

Richard Dawkins | 4.16

Why are there miles and miles of "unused" DNA within each of our bodies? Why should a bee give up its own chance to reproduce to help raise her sisters and brothers? With a prophet's clarity, Dawkins told us the answers from the perspective of molecules competing for limited space and resources to produce more of their own kind. Drawing fascinating examples from every field of biology, he paved the way for a serious re-evaluation of evolution. He also introduced the concept of self-reproducing ideas, or memes , which (seemingly) use humans exclusively for their propagation. If we are puppets, he says, at least we can try to understand our strings. --Rob Lightner

Charles T. Munger recommends this book in the second edition of Poor Charlie’s Almanack. (Source)

Matt Ridley Turned evolutionary biology on its head and was written like a great detective story. (Source)

Phil Libin Had a profound influence on me pretty early on. (Source)

How We Know What Isn't So

The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life

Thomas Gilovich | 4.16

Jonah Lehrer A really smart book and the reason I put it on there is that it really invented the genre of science non-fiction. (Source)

Nicholas Epley This is a book about intuitive human judgment and how the way we think about the world can be distorted and misdirected by forces within our own mind, like our tendency to think well of ourselves, by cognitive forces, such as the ease with which information comes to mind, and by environmental forces, like asymmetries in feedback. (Source)

Being Logical

A Guide to Good Thinking

D.Q. McInerny | 4.14

David and Goliath

Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

Malcolm Gladwell | 4.14

Catalina Penciu Business-wise, my goal for this year is to improve my collection and my mindset, but my favorite so far has been David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell. (Source)

Robert Katai Buy Malcolm Gladwell’s book “David and Goliath” and read the interesting stories about how the Davids of that moments have defeated the Goliaths. (Source)

The Signal and the Noise

Why So Many Predictions Fail - But Some Don't

Nate Silver | 4.14

Bill Gates Anyone interested in politics may be attracted to Nate Silver’s The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—but Some Don't. Silver is the New York Times columnist who got a lot of attention last fall for predicting—accurately, as it turned out–the results of the U.S. presidential election. This book actually came out before the election, though, and it’s about predictions in many... (Source)

The End of Faith

Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

Sam Harris | 4.13

Evan Carmichael His first book, The End of Faith, spent 33 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list. He's one of the most sought after speakers in the world. He's Sam Harris and here's my take on his Top 10 Rules for Success! #Believe #EvanCarmichael #SamHarris #entrepreneur #valueyourtime https://t.co/ZL0iUlqCOT (Source)

Dr. Andrew Weil One of the books that I have commonly given out to people. (Source)

Lies My Teacher Told Me

Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong

James W. Loewen | 4.13

Talking to Strangers

What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know

Malcolm Gladwell | 4.13

Ryan Holiday I'll put here what I emailed Malcolm when I finished the book: "Just finished your new book in one sitting yesterday. So good. You are at the height of your powers and remain an inspiration to all of us trying to master an un-masterable profession." It's a little less practical or self-improvement oriented than his previous books, but far more thought provoking. (Source)

Nilofer Merchant An interesting analysis/ essay re Gladwell’s latest book —> https://t.co/5Ey1maNRyI (Source)

God Is Not Great

How Religion Poisons Everything

Christopher Hitchens | 4.13

Sam Harris You can get the benefit of both his voice and his writing if you listen to [this audiobook]. (Source)

Poor Charlie's Almanack

The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger

Peter D. Kaufman, Ed Wexler, Warren E. Buffett, Charles T. Munger | 4.12

Warren Buffett From 1733 to 1758, Ben Franklin dispensed useful and timeless advice through Poor Richard's Almanack. Among the virtues extolled were thrift, duty, hard work, and simplicity. Subsequently, two centuries went by during which Ben's thoughts on these subjects were regarded as the last word. Then Charlie Munger stepped forth. (Source)

Naval Ravikant I always recommend [this book] as my top business book. (Source)

Think like a Freak

The Authors of Freakonomics Offer to Retrain Your Brain

Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner | 4.12

Critical Thinking Skills

Effective Analysis, Argument and Reflection

Stella Cottrell | 4.12

The Invisible Gorilla

And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us

Christopher Chabris, Daniel Simons | 4.11

Dan Ariely These guys did one of the most important pieces of research in social science, to show how little we actually see in the world around us. (Source)

The Undoing Project

A Friendship That Changed Our Minds

Michael Lewis | 4.11

Doug McMillon Here are some of my favorite reads from 2017. Lots of friends and colleagues send me book suggestions and it's impossible to squeeze them all in. I continue to be super curious about how digital and tech are enabling people to transform our lives but I try to read a good mix of books that apply to a variety of areas and stretch my thinking more broadly. (Source)

David Heinemeier Hansson Michael Lewis is just a great storyteller, and tell a story in this he does. It’s about two Israeli psychologists, their collaboration on the irrationality of the human mind, and the milestones they set with concepts like loss-aversion, endowment effect, and other common quirks that the assumption of rationality doesn’t account for. It’s a bit long-winded, but if you like Lewis’ style, you... (Source)

Francisco Perez Mackenna ​This summer, Mackenna is learning more about the birth of behavioral economics, the psychology of white collar crime, and the restoration of American cities as locations of economic growth. (Source)

The Organized Mind

Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload

Daniel J. Levitin | 4.11

David Allen Your head is not designed to remember, remind, prioritize, or manage relationships with more than four things. I’ve known this experientially for the last 35 years—that your head is for having ideas, but it’s a terrible place to hang onto them. Levitin validated that in a very rigorously researched book. (Source)

Your Guide to Effective Argument, Successful Analysis and Independent Study

Tom Chatfield | 4.11

Nigel Warburton Clearly written and accessible. Chatfield teaches a point, then asks you to test yourself to see whether you’ve learnt the moves that he’s described. It’s very wide ranging: it includes material on cognitive biases as well as more logical moves and arguments. (Source)

The Coddling of the American Mind

How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure

Greg Lukianoff, Jonathan Haidt | 4.10

Mark Manson The kids aren’t alright. No, really—I know every generation says that, but this time it’s true. Kids who grew up with smartphones (and have begun to enter the university system) are emotionally stunted, overly fragile, and exhibiting mental health issues at alarming rates. I expected this book to be another, “Let’s all shit on social media together,” party, but it’s not. Social media, of course,... (Source)

Max Levchin Highlights the need to continue to have such discussions about sensitive topics instead of ignoring them for the sake of comfort. (Source)

Glenn Beck Just finished The Coddling of the American mind by @glukianoff Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. Insightful. Straight forward and very helpful. A book that not only correctly identifies what ails us but also gives practical steps to cure. MUST READ (Source)

Nonviolent Communication

A Language of Life

Marshall B. Rosenberg, Deepak Chopra | 4.10

Satya Nadella Upon becoming CEO, Nadella confronted Microsoft’s legendarily combative culture by urging his new reports to read this book, which preaches the power of empathy, self-awareness, and authenticity in collaboration in the workplace, at home, and beyond. Like many of his favorites, it was first recommended to him by his wife, Anu: “I’m heavily influenced by the books she reads more than the books I... (Source)

Dustin Moskovitz Seek first to understand. (Source)

Esther Perel I think that this book is a classic for anyone who is thinking relationships. (Source)

How to Make Better Decisions

Dan Heath, Chip,Heath | 4.09

Cristian-Dragos Baciu So for business related books, the one that I think had the most impact for me was Decisive: How to make better choices in life and work, by Chip & Dan Heath. [...] The reason I enjoyed their work so much is because they offer real-life stories and insights that makes it so much easier for the reader to imprint that information in his mind. (Source)

Sean Mallon It looks at what hinders great decision making, and how to improve any decisions you make. Any entrepreneur knows how crucial their decisions in business are (and how devastating indecision can be). Decisive helps the reader to understand how good decisions are made, what key elements to look for, and how to make your choices better and quicker. (Source)

Julia Galef Explains four of the biggest judgment errors [...] and gives tips for combating them. (Source)

A More Beautiful Question

The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas

Warren Berger | 4.08

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Yuval Noah Harari | 4.08

Bill Gates Harari is such a stimulating writer that even when I disagreed, I wanted to keep reading and thinking. All three of his books wrestle with some version of the same question: What will give our lives meaning in the decades and centuries ahead? So far, human history has been driven by a desire to live longer, healthier, happier lives. If science is eventually able to give that dream to most people,... (Source)

Brajesh Kumar Singh Harari, currently, the world's best historian and future analyst, is a gay! He is a Jew and writes his books in Hebrew! Got universal acclaim for his first book Sapiens, followed by Homo Deus and now the latest, 21 lessons for the 21st century! Salute to this genius, keep it up! https://t.co/s7R6oEbwiN (Source)

Eh Bee Family @harari_yuval This book is amazing. After every chapter...I pause...then freak out...then gather myself and keep reading. (Source)

Superforecasting

The Art and Science of Prediction

Philip E. Tetlock, Dan Gardner | 4.08

Sheil Kapadia Read the book Superforecasting, had a great conversation with @bcmassey and came up with seven ideas for how NFL teams can try to find small edges during the draft process. Would love to hear feedback on this one. https://t.co/PdN1fKCagl (Source)

Julia Galef [Has] some good advice on how to improve your ability to make accurate predictions. (Source)

The Magic of Reality

How We Know What's Really True

Richard Dawkins | 4.08

Bill Gates Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist at Oxford, has a gift for making science enjoyable. This book is as accessible as the TV series Cosmos is for younger audiences—and as relevant for older audiences. It’s an engaging, well-illustrated science textbook offering compelling answers to big questions, like “how did the universe form?” and “what causes earthquakes?” It’s also a plea for readers of all... (Source)

Vote Dem For The Planet @EJDuboisL7444 @realDonaldTrump It’s a great book, like all Dawkins’ books. (Source)

The Shock Doctrine

The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Naomi Klein | 4.08

George Monbiot The Shock Doctrine explains some of the mechanisms by which patrimonial capital acquires power and enhances its wealth. It’s a brilliant piece of work, and one of those rare books that changes the way you perceive the world. (Source)

Mat Whitecross It starts with the theory that moments of crisis have been utilised by the right wing in the US and other countries to manipulate people into following their agenda. (Source)

Donna Dickenson Naomi Klein’s argument is that capitalism actually requires deliberately engineered shocks to the economic systems. (Source)

Algorithms to Live By

The Computer Science of Human Decisions

Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths | 4.08

Sriram Krishnan @rabois @nealkhosla Yes! Love that book (Source)

Chris Oliver This is a great book talking about how you can use computer science to help you make decisions in life. How do you know when to make a decision on the perfect house? Car? etc? It helps you apply algorithms to making those decisions optimally without getting lost. (Source)

Judgment Under Uncertainty

Heuristics and biases.

Daniel Kahneman | 4.07

Jonah Lehrer This is one of the most influential books in modern economics. (Source)

Adam Robinson This study should be taught at every business school in the country. (Source)

The Blind Watchmaker

Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design

Richard Dawkins | 4.06

James Randi They talk about the blind watchmaker not being able to make a watch, but if you’re given an almost infinite number of combinations and permutations of materials and situations, the world will come about. Or it may not. In our case, it came about. You’re here, I’m here, and I’m very happy about that. (Source)

Jerry Coyne If I had to pick just one self-contained book that lays out Dawkins’s philosophy and methodology, and shows his literary skills, I would have to pick this one. (Source)

Tom Clarke Dawkins brought Darwin up to date, explaining evolution in a way that incorporates our understanding of genetics and heredity. (Source)

This Will Make You Smarter

New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking

John Brockman | 4.06

Think Smarter

Critical Thinking to Improve Problem-Solving and Decision-Making Skills

Michael Kallet | 4.06

The Believing Brain

From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies---How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths

MICHAEL SHERMER | 4.05

The Shallows

What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

Nicholas Carr | 4.05

Juliette Aristides Nicholas Carr talks at length about what is gained and lost by technological progress. Reading and writing enlarged people’s sympathetic response and enriched their lives even when the book was put aside. One could say the same thing about drawing. (Source)

Andra Zaharia While I was thinking of the best books to add to this short list, I realized that not even half of them are directly related to digital marketing. This is because I believe that the best marketers are people who understand human nature deeply and aim to bring out the best in it. Call me naive, but that’s how I see it. If I were to want to pursue a career in marketing, I’d read [...] The Shallows. (Source)

How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients

Ben Goldacre | 4.04

Tools for Smart Thinking

Richard Nisbett | 4.04

The Drunkard's Walk

How Randomness Rules Our Lives

Leonard Mlodinow | 4.03

David Spiegelhalter This is a general introduction to the history of probability and the way it comes into everyday life. It intersperses the historical development with modern applications, and looks at finance, sport, gambling, lotteries and coincidences. (Source)

Gabriel Coarna Leonard Mlodinow's "The Drunkarkd's Walk" -more precisely, the section on the "Monty Hall" problem- totally changed how I look-at/think-about probabilities and choices in general; this has impacted almost every real-life choice I've made since I read this book. (Source)

Don't Believe Everything You Think

The 6 Basic Mistakes We Make in Thinking

Thomas E. Kida | 4.03

What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures

Malcolm Gladwell | 4.03

Sam Freedman @mrianleslie (Also I agree What the Dog Saw is his best book). (Source)

Merchants of Doubt

How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming

Erik M Conway | 4.03

Elon Musk I recommend people read a book called Merchants of Doubt. All they need to do is create doubt. (Source)

Trick or Treatment

The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine

Edzard Ernst, Simon Singh | 4.03

Jennifer Gunter @EdzardErnst @SLSingh Fantastic book. Really. Thank you for writing it!! (Source)

Stephen Law I really like this book. It’s a modern classic of the sceptic movement. Simon Singh is an excellent science writer. Edzard Ernst is the world’s first professor of complementary medicine. Well he was, Ernst is retired now. He started out convinced that there was some truth to the claims made by homeopathy and some other alternative practices. He was trained as a homeopath and he was a practising... (Source)

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Thomas S. Kuhn and Ian Hacking | 4.02

Mark Zuckerberg It's a history of science book that explores the question of whether science and technology make consistent forward progress or whether progress comes in bursts related to other social forces. I tend to think that science is a consistent force for good in the world. I think we'd all be better off if we invested more in science and acted on the results of research. I'm excited to explore this... (Source)

Tim O'Reilly The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas Kuhn. Kuhn introduced the term "paradigm shift" to describe the changeover from Ptolemaic to Copernican astronomy. But the book is far more than a classic in the history of science. It's also a book that emphasizes how what we already believe shapes what we see, what we allow ourselves to think. I've always tried to separate seeing itself from... (Source)

Andra Zaharia I’ve gone through quite a few experiences brought on or shaped by what I’ve learned from books. A particularly unexpected one happened in college when our public relations teacher asked us to read a book called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn. As a humanities student, you can imagine that I wasn’t thrilled I’d have to read a book on science, but what followed blew my mind... (Source)

The Art of Reasoning

An Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking

David Kelley | 4.02

How to Change Your Mind

What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence

POLLAN MICHAE | 4.02

Daniel Goleman Michael Pollan masterfully guides us through the highs, lows, and highs again of psychedelic drugs. How to Change Your mind chronicles how it’s been a longer and stranger trip than most any of us knew. (Source)

Yuval Noah Harari Changed my mind, or at least some of the ideas held in my mind. (Source)

David Heinemeier Hansson How we get locked into viewing the world, ourselves, and each other in a certain way, and then finding it difficult to relate to alternative perspectives or seeing other angles. Studying philosophy, psychology, and sociology is a way to break those rigid frames we all build over time. But that’s still all happening at a pretty high level of perception. Mind altering drugs, and especially... (Source)

Seeing Like a State

How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

Professor James C. Scott | 4.02

Marvin Liao I tend to jump from book to book and may switch if I am interested in some new topic. This is a pleasure for me (which I also do benefit work wise from too). It’s quite a random list because I have eclectic interests (or just scatterbrained most likely) on tech business, AI, general global economy, geopolitics, rising Biotech economy & history. I'm basically 15% to 50% into all these books. (Source)

Venkatesh Rao Scott’s book is very important for anybody who wants to have an understanding of how complex modern societies work, why things seem to fail predictably, and what you can do about them, to a limited extent. (Source)

Clare Lockhart Seeing Like A State. He’s quite similar to Dewey in a way. He also sees the state as only a mechanism. But he thinks that the way that the state chooses to count, or the way it chooses to see, will inform how it behaves and what kind of animal it becomes. Scott explains, for example, how in France, in early modern times, the state decided to count two things. It decided to count how much salt... (Source)

Wait, What?

And Life's Other Essential Questions

James E. Ryan and HarperAudi | 4.02

The Greatest Show on Earth

The Evidence for Evolution

Richard Dawkins, Well-illustrated | 4.02

The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment

Thomas Gilovich, Dale Griffin, Daniel Kahneman | 4.02

Matthew Syed This is another really good set of essays in a rapidly growing branch of intellectual enquiry called behavioural economics where they look at the irrationalities in the way that humans behave. I thought this was brilliant. One essay in particular on irrational optimism caught my eye. It’s the idea that individuals who have slightly inflated expectations of their own abilities tend to persevere... (Source)

The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking

Concepts and Tools

Richard Paul, Linda Elder | 4.02

This miniature guide, which has sold more than half a million copies, is widely used in teach and learning, in personal and professional life. It distills the essence of critical thinking into a 23-page, pocket-sized guide. It introduces the interrelated complex of critical thinking concepts and principles implicit in the works of Richard Paul and Linda Elder. This guide is widely used at the college level. It can be used as a critical thinking supplement to any textbook or course.

Being Wrong

Adventures in the Margin of Error

Kathryn Schulz | 4.02

Peter Attia One of the books that considers to be an important read for people interested in his career path. (Source)

Fabrice Grinda I have lots of books to recommend, but they are not related to my career path. The only one that is remotely related is Peter Thiel’s Zero to One. That said here are books I would recommend. (Source)

The Portable Atheist

Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever

Christopher Hitchens | 4.02

Thinking in Bets

Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts

Annie Duke | 4.01

Charles Duhigg Through wonderful storytelling and sly wit, Annie Duke has crafted the ultimate guide to thinking about risk. We can all learn how to make better decisions by learning from someone who made choices for a living, with millions on the line. (Source)

Marc Andreessen Compact guide to probabilistic domains like poker, or venture capital. Best articulation of "resulting", drawing bad conclusions from confusing process and outcome. Recommend for people operating in the real world. (Source)

Seth Godin Brilliant. Buy ten copies and give one to everyone you work with. It's that good. (Source)

Thank You for Arguing

What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion

Jay Heinrichs | 4.01

Angela Pham The attendees in the altMBA program actually influenced me the most in my book purchases: Robin Flaherty persuaded me to buy Thank You For Arguing. (Source)

Teaching Critical Thinking

Practical Wisdom

bell hooks | 4.01

Letter to a Christian Nation

Sam Harris | 4.01

Finite and Infinite Games a Vision of Life as Play and Possibility

James P. Carse | 4.01

Jane McGonigal It’s basically a book about games, but then it turns out it’s about the meaning of life. (Source)

Tom Critchlow @fkpxls Also it made me think of analogies to finite and infinite games. Have you read that book? If not you might enjoy it! (Source)

Kevin Kelly Gave me a mathematical framework for my own spirituality. (Source)

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

Charles MacKay | 4.01

Jonah Lehrer A wonderful eclectic history of mass human irrationality, and a great history of financial bubbles. (Source)

Tom Joseph "Do you know who I am"- Trump cries a/b his status, Iran & Obama are panic b4 his bubble pops Mania's will end in panic as noted in a favorite book: Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay. Not a plug-written in 1841 Trumpmania is now Trumpanic https://t.co/WnVGJ8Hung (Source)

John Gapper It’s a very patchy book, but it leads off with three classic financial booms and busts – tulip mania in Holland, the Mississippi scheme in 18th century France, and the South Sea Bubble. MacKay was a journalist with a fine tabloid style, and he writes it all up very entertainingly. He gets the eyewitness quotes and he finds the human foibles. (Source)

Skin in the Game

Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

Nassim Nicholas Taleb | 4.01

Ben Horowitz A book about the dynamics of how large-scale, highly random systems behave. (Source)

Marc Andreessen Skin in the game as conflict of interest, or as attaching one's livelihood to one's speech? Who to listen to, and why. Ideal counterpart to Philip Tetlock's Expert Political Judgment. (Source)

Daniel Kahneman Changed my view of how the world works. (Source)

Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions

James Randi, Isaac Asimov | 4.01

Richard Wiseman This book had a huge impact on me when I first came across it, because it was the first time I’d seen a whole volume which wasn’t taking any nonsense. (Source)

Why Evolution Is True

Jerry A. Coyne | 4.01

An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments

Ali Almossawi, Alejandro Giraldo | 4.00

Beyond Feelings

Vincent Ruggiero | 4.00

The Power of the Socratic Classroom

Students. Questions. Dialogue. Learning.

Charles Ames Fischer | 4.00

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20 Best Books on Critical Thinking (2022 Review)

September 16, 2020 by James Wilson

DISCLOSURE: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning when you click the links and make a purchase, I receive a commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Critical thinking is a skill/mindset that enables a person to think logically. Critical thinking is a vital necessity for everyone these days who want to perform exceptionally. No matter what field of life you are in, let it be a student, a teacher, an athlete or a corporate employee. There are high chances that you will need to enable critical thinking to find a noteworthy solution to your problems and be able to move forward effectively.

To enable critical thinking, there are certain things involved. These include evaluating evidence, weighing the chances, analysing assumptions and more. Once you start your journey towards critical thinking, you start to take the next steps automatically. It is a journey that takes you from assumptions to the realities that are possible.

What are the Best Critical Thinking Books to read?

With effective critical thinking skills, it is impossible for you to be fooled by anyone. You can read one’s intentions right away. You can even see what other people cannot, based on evidence and argument.

If you are looking to grow respective critical thinking skills, and want to learn it quick. We have compiled a list of books that you can read the review for. This will enable you to choose the right book on critical thinking for your learning journey.

Best Books on Critical Thinking: Our Top 20 Picks

Here are some of the best critical thinking books that you can consider to expand your knowledge on the subject:

1. Critical Thinking Skills for Dummies

Of Course, we all are already aware of the “For Dummies” series. For those who are not, this series presents an absolute and definitive guide for the beginners. With the help of this series, everyone can effectively learn the skills from the beginner level to advance. If you have little to zero knowledge about critical thinking and want to learn, this is the book for you.

The book has been written by Martin Cohen. It serves the purpose by enabling its readers to get access to the most comprehensible and easy-to-read narrative on critical thinking. The book provides you with access to several tools that you can activate to develop reflective thinking. There is also deep insight from the beginners’ level on how you can brainstorm to generate insights.

• Authors : Martin Cohen (Author)
• Publisher : For Dummies; 1st Edition (May 4, 2015)
• Pages : 376 pages

2. Think Smarter: Critical thinking to improve problem-solving and decision-making skills

Critical thinking is a necessary skill for all that are studying, teaching, or working in any part of life. It enables you to look at the flaws in a system, a story, a program, a project or virtually anything so you can effectively improve it.

This book is all about using critical thinking to improve problem-solving and decision-making skills. Written by Michael Kallet, the book presents valuable arguments that you can use to weigh your options, find the flaws and improve your critical thinking skills. This book goes beyond the concepts and is about the examples of real-world scenarios that will not only serve as a clear piece of understanding for you but also help you with the exercise and practice of such skills. The book has over 25 tools for critical thinking with real-world examples.

• Authors : Michael Kallet (Author)
• Publisher : Wiley; 1st Edition (April 7, 2014)
• Pages : 240 pages

3. Critical Thinking (10th Edition)

There are levels of Critical thinking classified with the understanding and utilization level of the students. The course enables students to think logically and critically not only in the class but in the real-world to make effective decisions.

It will not be wrong to call this book the most taught textbook on critical thinking subjects. The book is written by Brooke Noel Moore and Richard Parker. It presents the students with a buffet of examples and exercises that they can perform within or outside the class to enable their critical thinking skills and do well in their life. The book presents a highly understandable version of critical thinking in Moore’s famous, engaging narrative.

• Authors : Brooke Noel Moore (Author), Richard Parker (Author)
• Publisher : McGraw-Hill; 10th Edition (January 1, 2012)
• Pages : 576 pages

4. Critical Thinking: Tools for taking charge of your learning and your life (3rd Edition)

Critical thinking has become highly popular in the last couple of decades. It enables you with an approach of integration and making decisions based on viable arguments and evidence instead of hallow words. The sixth sense is a thing, but weighing your arguments and the right evidence laying in front of you is what critical thinking enables you to do.

Written by two experts of the field Richard Paul, and Linda Elder, this book presents its readers with a huge list of interactive tools that they can learn to utilize in their learning journey towards critical thinking. This book is focused on a comprehensive and practical approach to critical thinking that is to be used in everyday life. With this book, you can get your hands on some new diagrams that will enhance your decision-making skills.

• Authors : Richard Paul (Author), Linda Elder (Author)
• Publisher : Pearson; 3rd Edition (November 20, 2019)
• Pages : 528 pages

5. The power of Critical Thinking: Effective Reasoning about Ordinary and Extraordinary claims

Critical thinking is a power that takes you from assuming to believing. It enables you to understand the truth laying behind the valid evidences that someone is trying to hide it from you. It is a skill to believe in the true version of events instead of hallow words.

Written by Lewis Vaughn, this book is the right read for you if you are looking to enable and use critical thinking in your daily routine. The book enables you access to a wide range of tools you need to apply for critical thinking in daily life. It provides a perspective understandable and applicable by students, teachers, corporate workers, and normal people alike. Including scientific reasoning, evidence, authority, and visual reasoning this book can enable you to get the skills of critical thinking in a commendable manner.

• Authors : Lewis Vaughn (Author)
• Publisher : Oxford University Press; 6th Edition (September 20, 2018)
• Pages : 600 pages

6. Critical Thinking, Reading and Writing: A Brief Guide to Argument (9th Edition)

If you are a reader, student or an individual with a job requirement of reading and getting the right information. This book is the right guide for you. This book is a comprehensive, compact guide for all those who want to learn the right skillset to weigh arguments based on validity and authority.

The book presents you with a number of real-life examples that will enable you to understand the fundamentals of skimming through the information and improve your analysis to reach the right conclusion. Written by Sylvan Barnet, Hugo Bedau, and John O’Hara this book has all the information and guidance to enable critical thinking and create valid arguments based on facts and figures.

• Authors : Sylvan Barnet (Author), Hugo Bedau (Author), John O’Hara (Author)
• Publisher : Bedford/St. Martin’s; Ninth Edition (October 4, 2016)

7. Critical Thinking (11th Edition)

Critical thinking is being taught as a course in most schools. It enables the students to make the right decisions in life effectively and to weigh the chances for their success. Critical thinking is a necessary tool for all who want to survive in this highly competitive world and outperform their selves every day.

It will not be wrong to call this book a Textbook. Written by Brooke Noel Moore, and Richard Parker this book contains a unique and interactive approach towards learning the skills required to enable critical thinking. There are real-world applications that enable the students and instructors alike to understand the concepts better. The book is a great help for not only scoring grades in the course but also being able to use the concepts and learnings effectively in daily routine.

• Publisher : McGraw-Hill Education; 11th Edition (January 15, 2014)
• Pages : 512 pages

8. Models for Critical Thinking: A fundamental guide to effective decision making, deep analysis, Intelligent reasoning, and independent thinking

Critical thinking has benefits far more reasonable and useful beyond the academic career. While there are no doubts about the importance of critical thinking for educational purposes. There are also a number of other applications that you can use critical thinking to analyse and understand the process of certain things going around.

Written by Albert Rutherford, this book is a marvel of critical thinking. With this book, you can get your hands on some advance concepts and techniques used to enable critical thinking. And the best part is, there are also numerous applications including that will enable you to enhance your critical thinking skills. The book contains elaborative insight on how you can apply logic to analyse and everyday events around you and use that to save yourself from getting tricked or manipulated.

• Authors : Albert Rutherford (Author)
• Publisher : Independently published (October 17, 2018)
• Pages : 278 pages

9. LOGITICA: Improve your critical thinking and problem-solving skills: the brain behind the brain

Problem-solving skills rely greatly on critical thinking. To understand an error in your work and to effectively eliminate that requires a deeper sense of understanding towards the comprehension of the reasons that may have caused the error and how you can improve.

This book is based on logistical facts and figures rather than assumptions, that could have been true. Logics presents you with a more accurate opportunity and approach towards improving our problem-solving skills. Written by Neelabh Kumar, this book is a right guide for all those who want to understand an in-depth perspective of what may have caused an error and how you can eliminate the possibility of recurrence through enhances critical thinking skills.

• Authors : Neelabh Kumar (Author)
• Publisher : Independently published (January 8, 2019)
• Pages : 329 pages

10. A workbook for arguments, Second Edition: A complete course in critical thinking

This second edition of a highly popular guide on critical thinking contains all major improvements that back the fundamentals of the first edition. However, advancement and revelations are continued and this book is the right example of moving forward in your journey of learning critical thinking efficiently.

The book is written by David R. Morrow and Anthony Weston. In this book, they present an understandable and easy to imply narrative towards critical thinking. The book contains elaborative information on all the exercises of critical thinking. Also, it has improved and enhanced version of scientific reasoning that was discussed in earlier edition. This is a perfect workbook for all the students and those who are looking to improve their critical thinking skills.

• Authors : David R. Morrow (Author), Anthony Weston (Author)
• Publisher : Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.; Second Edition (November 1, 2015)

11. From Critical Thinking to Argument: A Portable Guide (5th Edition)

Critical Thinking is a valuable skill for all, especially the writers. While other people have to self-analyse and use the information for their own improvements and apply them their selves. Writers are required to craft the arguments based on the information and their critical thinking skills.

This book is written by Sylvan Barnet, Hugo Bedau, and John O’Hara. It is a handbook that is compact and has a precise narrative to not only enhance critical thinking skills but also to improve the knowledge. The book contains practical exercises on how one can effectively craft the arguments based on facts, figures, and assumptions that might come true.

• Publisher : Bedford/St. Martin’s; Fifth Edition (December 22, 2016)
• Pages : 432 pages

12. Critical Thinking: The effective Beginner’s guide to master logical facilities using a scientific approach and improve your rational thinking skills with problem-solving tools to make better decisions

Thinking deep and analytically requires you to work on your thinking process and analyse the information effectively. These are some skills that require you to work on yourself and the way you look at things. It includes changing your narrative towards the things that might be causing hindrance in your thinking process and clouding your judgment.

The book is written & published by Travis Holiday, and Kevin Hollins. This is the right guide for all the beginners to start thinking rationally and based on the facts that are affecting things around you. There are indicators that allow you to see the reality hidden behind things and words with absolute meaning. However, there are deeper practices along the way and you must understand those to start thinking effectively the right possible way. This book is the right guide that will take you from beginner to master-level critical thinking approach through its easy to understand and imply a narrative.

• Authors : Travis Holiday (Author), Kevin Hollins (Author)
• Publisher : Independently published (September 18, 2019)
• Pages : 210 pages

13. Critical Thinking (12th Edition)

Researches are being conducted daily on critical thinking. With each passing day, there are new and more effective concepts that are being discovered and proven right. These concepts are not a denial to older ones but strengthen their validity. If you are looking to get your hands on some of the latest concepts of Critical thinking, this is the right book for you.

Written by Brooke Noel Moore and Richard Parker, this book presents you with the most up-to-date concepts of critical thinking. It has an improved narrative and hundreds of latest examples based on real-world scenarios that will enable you to think critically and improve your decision-making skills in every part of your life.

• Publisher : McGraw-Hill Higher Education; 12th Edition (October 25, 2016)

14. The basics of Critical Thinking

Young minds are more interesting and they are more curious. Curiosity is considered the first step toward critical thinking. It is believed that habits made in early age stays with you for life. Critical thinking is more of a habit, a lifestyle than a skill set that you can earn over time. Hence, this book presents a version of basic tools that can enable younger minds to get hold of the basics of critical thinking.

The book follows simple English with a narrative that is easier to understand for children. To increase interest, this book contains a colourful and image-based description of things. The book is written by Michael Baker. While it is intended for younger people, that does not mean adults cannot read it. For all those who want to learn the fundamentals of critical thinking and to enable their selves to analyse things effectively, this book is a worthy read.

• Authors : Michael Baker (Author), Children’s Books – Educational (Introduction)
• Publisher : The Critical Thinking Co. (January 1, 2015)
• Pages : 152 pages

15. Tools of Critical Thinking: Meta thoughts of psychology, second edition.

While there are other books that focus on basics and how you can start analysing things and events to think critically. This book is focused more on in-depth analysis and understanding of psychology involved behind decision making and critical thinking approach.

Written by David A. Levy, this book presents a highly understandable narrative and approach towards thinking critically and to understand how human psychology works towards it. If you are having problems in thinking critically due to the emotions attached and are unable to get ahead of these. This book is the perfect guide for you.

• Authors : David A. Levy (Author)
• Publisher : Waveland Pr Inc; 2nd Edition (September 1, 2009)
• Pages : 298 pages

16. Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific guide to critical thinking skills

Our minds can often deceive us to think differently, while the truth is looking right in your eyes. Being said that, human judgment and decision making can often be clouded by certain feelings that are attached to it. There is no denial to it that sometimes we are unable to look at the reality because of our emotions and feelings.

This book is the right guide for all those who think that they are lacking in any field of life due to their emotions and being unable to think critically on the subject. The book presents you with a blunt and harsh narrative to stop relying on emotions and scientifically understand the factors that are stopping you from thinking critically and efficiently. It is written by Steven Novella and published by The Great Courses. The book also includes a critical toolbox that you can use to access the quality of information and skillset required to think critically.

• Authors : Professor Steven Novella (Author), Yale School of Medicine (Foreword)
• Publisher : The Great Courses (January 1, 2012)

17. Master Critical Thinking: Think Intelligently, Improve Problem-Solving Skills, make better Decisions, and Upgrade your life.

To master critical thinking, one must have several goals. The goals can be thinking intelligently and enable enhanced thinking, improving your problem-solving skills or simply making better decisions in everyday life.

Whatever your goals may be, critical thinking is the right approach towards upgrading your life with the help of improving each decision and backing it based on solid arguments instead of vague assumptions and emotions attached to it that can be deceiving at times. If you often struggle with the urge to make the right decision and want to get over with the gut feelings you have. This book will guide you to start thinking critically instead of simply relying on emotions and assumptions.

• Authors : Henrik Rodgers (Author)
• Publisher : Independently published (July 9, 2019)
• Pages : 116 pages

18. Critical Thinking: The Beginners User manual to Improve your communication and self-confidence skills Every day. The Tools and the concepts for problem-solving and decision making.

To learn from your own failures is the right way to understand and not make those mistakes again. It is the best practice to improve your own-self. However, to improve and to correct your own mistakes, the right approach is to realise them. While there are people, who can turn a blind eye towards their own mistakes. This book is the right guide that teaches you how not to. The book contains great insight into self-realization and how you can use it to improve your own thinking skills.

The book is written by Jacko Babin and Ray Manson. It contains elaborative insight on how you can effectively stop second-guessing yourself and have a confident approach towards improving the mistakes. Once you have realized your own mistakes, the rest of the journey becomes easier for you. The book also contains numerous real-life examples that will help you understand these concepts in a much better way.

• Authors : Jocko Babin (Author), Ray Manson (Author)
• Publisher : Independently published (March 9, 2019)
• Pages : 147 pages

19. A concise guide to critical thinking (1st Edition)

Lewis Vaughn is considered an expert on the subject of critical thinking. He has written several books covering the topic. His books contain an in-depth analysis of how you can enable critical thinking in your daily routine and what might be stopping you from doing so.

This book, however, can be deemed as a complete summary of concepts being advocated by him. Along with the guidance on covering the obstacles that are stopping you and enabling your mind to think critically. This book contains a highly understandable and easy to follow the narrative that will be great for all the beginners to understand and imply critical thinking from scratch to master level.

• Publisher : Oxford University Press; Annotated – Illustrated Edition (October 1, 2017)
• Pages : 352 pages

20. The miniature guide to critical thinking concepts and tools (Thinker’s guide library)

If you are looking to master critical thinking and do not have time to read extensive concepts and get yourself indulged with the psychic or scientific approach. This is the book for you. This book presents a concise and to-the-point approach to critical thinking concepts and tools.

Written by Richard Paul and Linda Elder, the book does not only contain all the information required to understand the concepts on critical thinking but also how you can imply those in your daily life to enhance your decision making and critical thinking skills effectively. The book presents a short and easy to follow approach towards the subject.

• Publisher : The Foundation for Critical Thinking; Eighth Edition (September 20, 2019)
• Pages : 48 pages

Choosing the Best Critical Thinking Books

Critical thinking is not just a skill-set. It is a way of life that enables you to make the right decisions in every part of life. It also enables you to understand the things, events and the factors involved behind them efficiently. With the help of critical thinking, you can analyse the events and decisions unbiased by any sort of feelings or attachments.

We have gone through these books and compiled a list of critical reviews on these books. If you are looking to start thinking critically and are unsure of where to start. This guide will definitely help you to choose the right book to aid your learning journey.

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14 Of The Best Critical Thinking Books That Come Packed With Examples

Anthony metivier.

• December 12, 2022

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However, few of them come packed with examples.

Even fewer come with exercises. 

Examples and exercises are important because critical thinking is not just something you learn. 

It’s something you develop through practical application. 

Here’s another problem that might be frustrating you if you’re looking for the best critical thinking books:

A lot of them are either irrelevant, “dumbed-down” for the mass market, or already abandoned by their authors.

For example, the famous Thinking, Fast and Slow on just about every list has big problems. 

Its author, Daniel Khaneman has agreed that several entire chapters need to be removed in a future edition. 

The reproducibility problem. Many of the studies he refers to weren’t scientifically valid. 

But critical thinking is based on reproducible models.

So on this page, let’s dig into a comprehensive list of critical thinking books that won’t go out of date.

The 14 Best Critical Thinking Books Packed With Examples For Improving Your Mind

As you go through these examples, consider your specific goals.

As you’ll see, each of these examples are related, but each has different strengths. 

You’ll want to beef up on each of these areas, but as you gather your collection, I suggest you start with where you currently feel you need the most help. 

One: Scientific Critical Thinking

In Critical Thinking for Better Learning: New Insights from Cognitive Science , Carole Hamilton helps you understand how the brain creates categories in the mind. 

Knowledge of how your mind works helps you tap into how your memory deals with examples and analogies that can improve your thinking skills.

Some of the best parts of this book teach you:

• How to study topics thoroughly so that you can think critically about them.
• How to develop creative analogies so you can see the “shape” and dynamics of larger topics. 
• Threshold concepts, which are “the central, defining truths in a given discipline, the ideas that open a gateway to deeper understanding.”
• Why some ideas are obvious to certain people but take others a long time to learn.

As an example of how this book helped me, when I was working on my Art of Memory project, it reminded me to read both the historical summary and also the specific books about memory during that period. This is what Hamilton means by knowing the “shape” of a topic.

Other great aspects of this book include its points on:

• How beliefs can distort facts
• Who really benefits and who suffered from environmental damage in the world
• The concept of opportunity cost
• How to assess critical thinking

It gives examples of each and concludes strong with its best tip: 

Study real problems and how they were solved, and then recall these frequently to test your memory for accuracy about the details. 

Two: A Jargon Free Toolkit

Critical thinking often involves a lot of complex terminology. You have to learn about antecedents in logic and the concept of paraconsistencies .

But if you’re just beginning and don’t have a Memory Palace , such terms can be hard to learn and remember. 

Enter The Critical Thinking Toolkit .

This book provides a wonderful introduction with examples from:

• Political science

Three: How To Think About Arguments

We all get into arguments.

That’s not a problem, but the ways we use language while arguing often causes more problems than necessary. 

Enter The Uses of Argument by Stephen E. Toulmin.

But in this excellent book, Toulmin shows you:

• What it means to make a valid argument
• How to lay out valid arguments
• The difference between working logic and idealised logic
• How that validity must be intra-field, not inter-field (so that you approach critical thinking comparatively)

It boils down to this:

Arguments have patterns and we can learn to perceive those patterns. 

One pro tip in this book is to find ways to see logic and critical thinking as historical. 

When you know how logic has changed over time, you’re able to note the patterns that shape how we communicate and use them better. 

That’s just one benefit. Here are 11 more benefits of critical thinking you can expect after reading the books on this page.

Four: Validity In Your Thinking

I’ll never forget hearing The Amazing Kreskin discuss hypnosis. He said:

“Hypnosis is nothing more than the acceptance of a suggestion.”

If you don’t have much time to learn how this is happening to you, I suggest Critical Thinking : A Concise Guide by Tracy Bowell and Gary Kemp.

This book’s strength is how it helps you determine whether an argument is valid. 

To do so, the authors teach you the connection between critical thinking and symbolic logic, informal logic and formal logic.

You also learn how to determine which parts of an argument are relevant. You get real world examples with detailed commentary on each.

A v Hoare is one of my favorite examples. In it, you learn about how the amount of detail shapes our perceptions. You also learn how to determine what information is valuable to properly assess the context and shape of an argument.

Five: How To Stop Thinking Against Yourself

I used to think very darkly. 

Little did I know that I was using my thoughts against myself, practically making it impossible to see opportunities.

Then I discovered The Luck Factor by Richard Wiseman.

This book not only goes through numerous examples of how people use cynical thinking against themselves. It also gives powerful exercises that help your critical thinking skills see opportunities your own thinking patterns might be hiding from you.

Six: Understanding Your Personality

That’s why I recommend Stuart Hanscomb’s Critical Thinking: The Basics .

Looking at your personal dispositions can help you avoid many of the problems created by emotions and cognitive biases . 

You may even want to go further by looking into the OCEAN model to help better understand how your personality might help or hinder your thinking abilities.

Either way, Hanscomb’s book is great. Pay extra attention to the final chapter. It’s pack with additional examples of fallacies you’ll want to avoid. 

Seven: Simple, But Not “Dumbed Down”

Crit ical Thinking Skills For Dummies , like many books in the “dummies” series is actually quite valuable.

Its biggest strengths are: 

• Strong examples of false dichotomies
• How to avoid logical pitfalls
• Examples of key arguments

Pay special attention to the final chapter and its list of “arguments that changed the world.” These are interesting and useful case studies. 

Eight: Thinking On Autopilot

One of the most challenging critical thinking examples to work through involves the topic of free will.

My favorite book on the topic is also one of the most hotly contested. 

But it’s the examples in Free Will by Sam Harris that really bring it all together.

And although Daniel Dennet strongly disagrees with its thesis, going through the for and against will give your thinking abilities a stretch.

Without a doubt, contending with the issue of free will is one of the best ways you can practice critical thinking. It will also give you a better understanding of human consciousness too. 

Nine: The Humpty Dumpty Of Thought

As the cohost of Philosophy Bites , a fantastic philosophy podcast, Warburton has packed this book with excellent critical thinking tools to up your game.

Some of my favorites include:

Weasel Words

“Advertisers who declare the food they are selling to be a ‘healthier alternative’ need to specify precisely what the food is healthier than and why. If they cannot do this, then the weasel words ‘healthier alternative’ are meaningless – mere rhetoric”

Humptydumptying

Giving private meanings to words in common use

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty answers, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

Ten: The Power of Analysis

This book proves a number of self assessment activities, including several sub-skills, such as identifying similarities and differences.

It also includes material on:

• Note taking in a critical manner
• Critical writing
• Reflective thinking tips as a mental discipline
• Multiple models of reflective thinking
• Bonus practice activities

If you do any kind of reading and writing, this book is a must. 

Eleven: Improve Your Research Skills

If you do anything involved in research, you know just how difficult interpreting data accurately can be. 

In this book, you’ll learn all about:

• How to seek trustworthy knowledge
• How to understand the role of hypothetical questions
• How samples are chosen and validated
• Aspects that threaten the validity of a research project
• The role of ethics in research
• Examples of multiple studies in different fields of interest

There are a large number of practice articles too. These will help you better engage with scientific reporting you encounter in the media. 

Twelve: Avoiding Errors

If you’re like me, you probably prefer to avoid mistakes whenever possible. 

This book exposes the many poor thinking habits we have. Here are just a few the book covers and then repairs:

• Being in a hurry
• Missing a deadline
• Faulty cost analyses
• Failing to ask for help

I’ve personally found this book helpful, especially when dealing with customers and personal coaching clients. It’s great to be able to ascertain what errors people are making and help guide them to more logical conclusions.

Anyone can do this for themselves too. Read this book. 

Thirteen: Know Your Science

The lack of scientific literacy in society is a huge problem. 

That’s why I recommend Science, Pseudo-science, Non-sense, and Critical Thinking: Why the Differences Matter .

In this book by Marianna Barr and Gershon Ben-Shakhar, you get detailed chapters that use critical thinking to debunk:

• Cold reading

Another thing that makes this critical thinking book unique is that it includes:

• Correspondence with Houdini
• Good movie and literature examples
• Excellent lists of books to follow-up on with for further information about each pseudoscientific topic

I also like how the book discusses the reasons why people need to believe – or at least think they do.

Fourteen: An Ancient Critical Thinking Book

Basically, this term translates to a statement like: “the culmination of the Vedas is ‘not two’”.

In other words, the philosophy works to demonstrate a “oneness” in human consciousness. 

One of the most interesting books uses critical thinking to demonstrate this principle. It is called Panchadasi .

My favorite commentary on this text, which includes a translation, is Inquiry Into Existence , by James Swartz.

This philosophy will probably stretch your mind.

The trick is not to mistake its conclusions for solipsism, which is arguably nonsense . It’s really just a way of thinking through the situation we all find ourselves in as the bearers of consciousness. 

Crafting A Library Of Critical Thinking Books

I hope you enjoyed checking out this list of books on critical thinking. Please let me know which ones you check out and how you helpful you found them. 

There are many more out there, and keep in mind that you can find texts that will help you improve many types of thinking . 

The important thing is to have a library that you continually build and read thoroughly. 

And to get it all in, I recommend that you check out how to read faster next.

Need help with remembering what you read from these books? Check out my free memory improvement course:

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6 Responses

Always a pleasure Anthony to read your ideas and thoughts!

Thanks so much for stopping by to give it a look, Raymond.

Anything new with your memory and learning journey lately?

Your lessons always help me. It’s really useful for every student.

Thanks so much for stopping by and letting me know!

As always, you provide great material for self-empowerment

Thanks so much for giving it a read. It is an honor and a pleasure to do this work and I appreciate your support very much!

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Critical Thinking Center (CTC)

Reference list.

The critical thinking literature is vast and growing. Below is a list of some of the things that we're reading at the Critical Thinking Center.

• Baehr, J. (2013). "Educating for the Intellectual Virtues." Journal of Philosophy of Education 47 (2): 248-262.
• Bailin, S., et al. (1999). "Common Misconceptions of Critical Thinking." Journal of Curriculum Studies 31 (3): 269-283.
• Bailin, S., et al. (1999). "Conceptualizing Critical Thinking." Journal of Curriculum Studies 31 (3): 285-302.
• Battaly, H. (2006). "Teaching Intellectual Virtues." Teaching Philosophy 29 (3): 191-222.
• Cahill, A. and Bloch-Shulman (2012). "Argumentation Step by Step." Teaching Philosophy 35 (1): 41-62.
• Carrington, M., et al. (2011). "Effectiveness of a single intervention of computer‐aided argument mapping in a marketing and a financial accounting subject." Higher Education Research & Development 30 (3): 387-403.
• Corvino, J. (2015). "Fact Opinion Distinction." The Philosopher's Magazine Online .
• Cullen, S., et al. (2018). "Improving analytical reasoning and argument understanding: a quasi-experimental field study of argument visualization." npj Science of Learning 3 (1): 21.
• Davies, M. (2008). "Not Quite Right: Helping Students to Make Better Arguments." Teaching in Higher Education 13 (3): 327-340.
• Davies, M. (2009). "Computer Assisted Argument Mapping a Rationale Approach." Higher Education 58 : 799-820.
• Davies, M. (2011). "Concept mapping, mind mapping and argument mapping: what are the differences and do they matter?" Higher Education 62 (3): 279-301.
• Ericsson, K. A. (2008). "Deliberate practice and acquisition of expert performance: a general overview." Academic Emergency Medicine 15 (11): 988-994.
• Facione, P. (2015). "Critical Thinking What It Is and Why It Counts." Retrieved from https://www.insightassessment.com/Resources/Importance-of-Critical-Thinking/Critical-Thinking-What-It-Is-and-Why-It-Counts .
• Gelder, T. v. (2005). "Teaching Critical Thinking: Some Lessons From Cognitive Science." College Teaching 53 (1): 41-48.
• Harrell, M. (2008). "No Computer Program Required." Teaching Philosophy 31 (4): 351-374.
• Harrell, M. (2012). "Assessing the Efficacy of Argument Diagramming." Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines 27 (2): 31-39.
• Hoffmann, M. (2005). "Logical Argument Mapping: A Method for Overcoming Cognitive Problems of Conflict Management." International Journal of Conflict Management 16 (4): 304-334.
• Hoffmann, M. (2011). "Climate Ethics: Structuring Deliberation by Means of Logical Argument Mapping." Journal of Speculative Philosophy 25 (1): 64-96.
• Hoffmann, M. (2011). Cognitive Effects of Argument Visualization Tools. Argumentation: Cognition and Community . F. Zenker : 1-12.
• Huitt, W. (1998). "Critical Thinking an Overview." Educational Psychology Interactive .
• Jones, W. (2012). "Higher Education Academic Communities and the Intellectual Virtues." Educational Theory 62 (6): 695-711.
• Larson, M., et al. (2004). "Disfluencies in Comprehending Argumentative Texts." Reading Psychology 25 (3): 205-224.
• Norris, S. (2014). Critical Thinking. Encyclopedia of Educational Theory and Philosophy . D. C. Phillips : 197-200.
• Sweller, J. (1994). "Cognitive Load Theory Learning Difficulty and Instructional Design." Learning and Instruction 4 : 295-312.
• Twardy, C. (2004). "Argument Maps Improve Critical Thinking." Teaching Philosophy 27 (2): 95-116.
• van Gelder, T. (2005). "Teaching Critical Thinking: Some Lessons from Cognitive Science." College Teaching 53 (1): 41-46.

Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking

(10 reviews)

Matthew Van Cleave, Lansing Community College

Copyright Year: 2016

Publisher: Matthew J. Van Cleave

Language: English

Formats Available

Conditions of use.

Learn more about reviews.

Reviewed by "yusef" Alexander Hayes, Professor, North Shore Community College on 6/9/21

Formal and informal reasoning, argument structure, and fallacies are covered comprehensively, meeting the author's goal of both depth and succinctness. read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 5 see less

Formal and informal reasoning, argument structure, and fallacies are covered comprehensively, meeting the author's goal of both depth and succinctness.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

The book is accurate.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

While many modern examples are used, and they are helpful, they are not necessarily needed. The usefulness of logical principles and skills have proved themselves, and this text presents them clearly with many examples.

Clarity rating: 5

It is obvious that the author cares about their subject, audience, and students. The text is comprehensible and interesting.

Consistency rating: 5

The format is easy to understand and is consistent in framing.

Modularity rating: 5

This text would be easy to adapt.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

The organization is excellent, my one suggestion would be a concluding chapter.

Interface rating: 5

I accessed the PDF version and it would be easy to work with.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

The writing is excellent.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

This is not an offensive text.

Reviewed by Susan Rottmann, Part-time Lecturer, University of Southern Maine on 3/2/21

I reviewed this book for a course titled "Creative and Critical Inquiry into Modern Life." It won't meet all my needs for that course, but I haven't yet found a book that would. I wanted to review this one because it states in the preface that it... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

I reviewed this book for a course titled "Creative and Critical Inquiry into Modern Life." It won't meet all my needs for that course, but I haven't yet found a book that would. I wanted to review this one because it states in the preface that it fits better for a general critical thinking course than for a true logic course. I'm not sure that I'd agree. I have been using Browne and Keeley's "Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking," and I think that book is a better introduction to critical thinking for non-philosophy majors. However, the latter is not open source so I will figure out how to get by without it in the future. Overall, the book seems comprehensive if the subject is logic. The index is on the short-side, but fine. However, one issue for me is that there are no page numbers on the table of contents, which is pretty annoying if you want to locate particular sections.

Content Accuracy rating: 4

I didn't find any errors. In general the book uses great examples. However, they are very much based in the American context, not for an international student audience. Some effort to broaden the chosen examples would make the book more widely applicable.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 4

I think the book will remain relevant because of the nature of the material that it addresses, however there will be a need to modify the examples in future editions and as the social and political context changes.

Clarity rating: 3

The text is lucid, but I think it would be difficult for introductory-level students who are not philosophy majors. For example, in Browne and Keeley's "Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking," the sub-headings are very accessible, such as "Experts cannot rescue us, despite what they say" or "wishful thinking: perhaps the biggest single speed bump on the road to critical thinking." By contrast, Van Cleave's "Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking" has more subheadings like this: "Using your own paraphrases of premises and conclusions to reconstruct arguments in standard form" or "Propositional logic and the four basic truth functional connectives." If students are prepared very well for the subject, it would work fine, but for students who are newly being introduced to critical thinking, it is rather technical.

It seems to be very consistent in terms of its terminology and framework.

Modularity rating: 4

The book is divided into 4 chapters, each having many sub-chapters. In that sense, it is readily divisible and modular. However, as noted above, there are no page numbers on the table of contents, which would make assigning certain parts rather frustrating. Also, I'm not sure why the book is only four chapter and has so many subheadings (for instance 17 in Chapter 2) and a length of 242 pages. Wouldn't it make more sense to break up the book into shorter chapters? I think this would make it easier to read and to assign in specific blocks to students.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 4

The organization of the book is fine overall, although I think adding page numbers to the table of contents and breaking it up into more separate chapters would help it to be more easily navigable.

Interface rating: 4

The book is very simply presented. In my opinion it is actually too simple. There are few boxes or diagrams that highlight and explain important points.

The text seems fine grammatically. I didn't notice any errors.

The book is written with an American audience in mind, but I did not notice culturally insensitive or offensive parts.

Overall, this book is not for my course, but I think it could work well in a philosophy course.

Reviewed by Daniel Lee, Assistant Professor of Economics and Leadership, Sweet Briar College on 11/11/19

This textbook is not particularly comprehensive (4 chapters long), but I view that as a benefit. In fact, I recommend it for use outside of traditional logic classes, but rather interdisciplinary classes that evaluate argument read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 3 see less

This textbook is not particularly comprehensive (4 chapters long), but I view that as a benefit. In fact, I recommend it for use outside of traditional logic classes, but rather interdisciplinary classes that evaluate argument

To the best of my ability, I regard this content as accurate, error-free, and unbiased

The book is broadly relevant and up-to-date, with a few stray temporal references (sydney olympics, particular presidencies). I don't view these time-dated examples as problematic as the logical underpinnings are still there and easily assessed

Clarity rating: 4

My only pushback on clarity is I didn't find the distinction between argument and explanation particularly helpful/useful/easy to follow. However, this experience may have been unique to my class.

To the best of my ability, I regard this content as internally consistent

I found this text quite modular, and was easily able to integrate other texts into my lessons and disregard certain chapters or sub-sections

The book had a logical and consistent structure, but to the extent that there are only 4 chapters, there isn't much scope for alternative approaches here

No problems with the book's interface

The text is grammatically sound

Cultural Relevance rating: 4

Perhaps the text could have been more universal in its approach. While I didn't find the book insensitive per-se, logic can be tricky here because the point is to evaluate meaningful (non-trivial) arguments, but any argument with that sense of gravity can also be traumatic to students (abortion, death penalty, etc)

No additional comments

Reviewed by Lisa N. Thomas-Smith, Graduate Part-time Instructor, CU Boulder on 7/1/19

The text covers all the relevant technical aspects of introductory logic and critical thinking, and covers them well. A separate glossary would be quite helpful to students. However, the terms are clearly and thoroughly explained within the text,... read more

The text covers all the relevant technical aspects of introductory logic and critical thinking, and covers them well. A separate glossary would be quite helpful to students. However, the terms are clearly and thoroughly explained within the text, and the index is very thorough.

The content is excellent. The text is thorough and accurate with no errors that I could discern. The terminology and exercises cover the material nicely and without bias.

The text should easily stand the test of time. The exercises are excellent and would be very helpful for students to internalize correct critical thinking practices. Because of the logical arrangement of the text and the many sub-sections, additional material should be very easy to add.

The text is extremely clearly and simply written. I anticipate that a diligent student could learn all of the material in the text with little additional instruction. The examples are relevant and easy to follow.

The text did not confuse terms or use inconsistent terminology, which is very important in a logic text. The discipline often uses multiple terms for the same concept, but this text avoids that trap nicely.

The text is fairly easily divisible. Since there are only four chapters, those chapters include large blocks of information. However, the chapters themselves are very well delineated and could be easily broken up so that parts could be left out or covered in a different order from the text.

The flow of the text is excellent. All of the information is handled solidly in an order that allows the student to build on the information previously covered.

The PDF Table of Contents does not include links or page numbers which would be very helpful for navigation. Other than that, the text was very easy to navigate. All the images, charts, and graphs were very clear

I found no grammatical errors in the text.

Cultural Relevance rating: 3

The text including examples and exercises did not seem to be offensive or insensitive in any specific way. However, the examples included references to black and white people, but few others. Also, the text is very American specific with many examples from and for an American audience. More diversity, especially in the examples, would be appropriate and appreciated.

Reviewed by Leslie Aarons, Associate Professor of Philosophy, CUNY LaGuardia Community College on 5/16/19

This is an excellent introductory (first-year) Logic and Critical Thinking textbook. The book covers the important elementary information, clearly discussing such things as the purpose and basic structure of an argument; the difference between an... read more

This is an excellent introductory (first-year) Logic and Critical Thinking textbook. The book covers the important elementary information, clearly discussing such things as the purpose and basic structure of an argument; the difference between an argument and an explanation; validity; soundness; and the distinctions between an inductive and a deductive argument in accessible terms in the first chapter. It also does a good job introducing and discussing informal fallacies (Chapter 4). The incorporation of opportunities to evaluate real-world arguments is also very effective. Chapter 2 also covers a number of formal methods of evaluating arguments, such as Venn Diagrams and Propositional logic and the four basic truth functional connectives, but to my mind, it is much more thorough in its treatment of Informal Logic and Critical Thinking skills, than it is of formal logic. I also appreciated that Van Cleave’s book includes exercises with answers and an index, but there is no glossary; which I personally do not find detracts from the book's comprehensiveness.

Overall, Van Cleave's book is error-free and unbiased. The language used is accessible and engaging. There were no glaring inaccuracies that I was able to detect.

Van Cleave's Textbook uses relevant, contemporary content that will stand the test of time, at least for the next few years. Although some examples use certain subjects like former President Obama, it does so in a useful manner that inspires the use of critical thinking skills. There are an abundance of examples that inspire students to look at issues from many different political viewpoints, challenging students to practice evaluating arguments, and identifying fallacies. Many of these exercises encourage students to critique issues, and recognize their own inherent reader-biases and challenge their own beliefs--hallmarks of critical thinking.

As mentioned previously, the author has an accessible style that makes the content relatively easy to read and engaging. He also does a suitable job explaining jargon/technical language that is introduced in the textbook.

Van Cleave uses terminology consistently and the chapters flow well. The textbook orients the reader by offering effective introductions to new material, step-by-step explanations of the material, as well as offering clear summaries of each lesson.

This textbook's modularity is really quite good. Its language and structure are not overly convoluted or too-lengthy, making it convenient for individual instructors to adapt the materials to suit their methodological preferences.

The topics in the textbook are presented in a logical and clear fashion. The structure of the chapters are such that it is not necessary to have to follow the chapters in their sequential order, and coverage of material can be adapted to individual instructor's preferences.

The textbook is free of any problematic interface issues. Topics, sections and specific content are accessible and easy to navigate. Overall it is user-friendly.

I did not find any significant grammatical issues with the textbook.

The textbook is not culturally insensitive, making use of a diversity of inclusive examples. Materials are especially effective for first-year critical thinking/logic students.

I intend to adopt Van Cleave's textbook for a Critical Thinking class I am teaching at the Community College level. I believe that it will help me facilitate student-learning, and will be a good resource to build additional classroom activities from the materials it provides.

Reviewed by Jennie Harrop, Chair, Department of Professional Studies, George Fox University on 3/27/18

While the book is admirably comprehensive, its extensive details within a few short chapters may feel overwhelming to students. The author tackles an impressive breadth of concepts in Chapter 1, 2, 3, and 4, which leads to 50-plus-page chapters... read more

While the book is admirably comprehensive, its extensive details within a few short chapters may feel overwhelming to students. The author tackles an impressive breadth of concepts in Chapter 1, 2, 3, and 4, which leads to 50-plus-page chapters that are dense with statistical analyses and critical vocabulary. These topics are likely better broached in manageable snippets rather than hefty single chapters.

The ideas addressed in Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking are accurate but at times notably political. While politics are effectively used to exemplify key concepts, some students may be distracted by distinct political leanings.

The terms and definitions included are relevant, but the examples are specific to the current political, cultural, and social climates, which could make the materials seem dated in a few years without intentional and consistent updates.

While the reasoning is accurate, the author tends to complicate rather than simplify -- perhaps in an effort to cover a spectrum of related concepts. Beginning readers are likely to be overwhelmed and under-encouraged by his approach.

Consistency rating: 3

The four chapters are somewhat consistent in their play of definition, explanation, and example, but the structure of each chapter varies according to the concepts covered. In the third chapter, for example, key ideas are divided into sub-topics numbering from 3.1 to 3.10. In the fourth chapter, the sub-divisions are further divided into sub-sections numbered 4.1.1-4.1.5, 4.2.1-4.2.2, and 4.3.1 to 4.3.6. Readers who are working quickly to master new concepts may find themselves mired in similarly numbered subheadings, longing for a grounded concepts on which to hinge other key principles.

Modularity rating: 3

The book's four chapters make it mostly self-referential. The author would do well to beak this text down into additional subsections, easing readers' accessibility.

The content of the book flows logically and well, but the information needs to be better sub-divided within each larger chapter, easing the student experience.

The book's interface is effective, allowing readers to move from one section to the next with a single click. Additional sub-sections would ease this interplay even further.

Grammatical Errors rating: 4

Some minor errors throughout.

For the most part, the book is culturally neutral, avoiding direct cultural references in an effort to remain relevant.

Reviewed by Yoichi Ishida, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Ohio University on 2/1/18

This textbook covers enough topics for a first-year course on logic and critical thinking. Chapter 1 covers the basics as in any standard textbook in this area. Chapter 2 covers propositional logic and categorical logic. In propositional logic,... read more

This textbook covers enough topics for a first-year course on logic and critical thinking. Chapter 1 covers the basics as in any standard textbook in this area. Chapter 2 covers propositional logic and categorical logic. In propositional logic, this textbook does not cover suppositional arguments, such as conditional proof and reductio ad absurdum. But other standard argument forms are covered. Chapter 3 covers inductive logic, and here this textbook introduces probability and its relationship with cognitive biases, which are rarely discussed in other textbooks. Chapter 4 introduces common informal fallacies. The answers to all the exercises are given at the end. However, the last set of exercises is in Chapter 3, Section 5. There are no exercises in the rest of the chapter. Chapter 4 has no exercises either. There is index, but no glossary.

The textbook is accurate.

The content of this textbook will not become obsolete soon.

The textbook is written clearly.

The textbook is internally consistent.

The textbook is fairly modular. For example, Chapter 3, together with a few sections from Chapter 1, can be used as a short introduction to inductive logic.

The textbook is well-organized.

There are no interface issues.

I did not find any grammatical errors.

This textbook is relevant to a first semester logic or critical thinking course.

Reviewed by Payal Doctor, Associate Professro, LaGuardia Community College on 2/1/18

This text is a beginner textbook for arguments and propositional logic. It covers the basics of identifying arguments, building arguments, and using basic logic to construct propositions and arguments. It is quite comprehensive for a beginner... read more

This text is a beginner textbook for arguments and propositional logic. It covers the basics of identifying arguments, building arguments, and using basic logic to construct propositions and arguments. It is quite comprehensive for a beginner book, but seems to be a good text for a course that needs a foundation for arguments. There are exercises on creating truth tables and proofs, so it could work as a logic primer in short sessions or with the addition of other course content.

The books is accurate in the information it presents. It does not contain errors and is unbiased. It covers the essential vocabulary clearly and givens ample examples and exercises to ensure the student understands the concepts

The content of the book is up to date and can be easily updated. Some examples are very current for analyzing the argument structure in a speech, but for this sort of text understandable examples are important and the author uses good examples.

The book is clear and easy to read. In particular, this is a good text for community college students who often have difficulty with reading comprehension. The language is straightforward and concepts are well explained.

The book is consistent in terminology, formatting, and examples. It flows well from one topic to the next, but it is also possible to jump around the text without loosing the voice of the text.

The books is broken down into sub units that make it easy to assign short blocks of content at a time. Later in the text, it does refer to a few concepts that appear early in that text, but these are all basic concepts that must be used to create a clear and understandable text. No sections are too long and each section stays on topic and relates the topic to those that have come before when necessary.

The flow of the text is logical and clear. It begins with the basic building blocks of arguments, and practice identifying more and more complex arguments is offered. Each chapter builds up from the previous chapter in introducing propositional logic, truth tables, and logical arguments. A select number of fallacies are presented at the end of the text, but these are related to topics that were presented before, so it makes sense to have these last.

The text is free if interface issues. I used the PDF and it worked fine on various devices without loosing formatting.

1. The book contains no grammatical errors.

The text is culturally sensitive, but examples used are a bit odd and may be objectionable to some students. For instance, President Obama's speech on Syria is used to evaluate an extended argument. This is an excellent example and it is explained well, but some who disagree with Obama's policies may have trouble moving beyond their own politics. However, other examples look at issues from all political viewpoints and ask students to evaluate the argument, fallacy, etc. and work towards looking past their own beliefs. Overall this book does use a variety of examples that most students can understand and evaluate.

My favorite part of this book is that it seems to be written for community college students. My students have trouble understanding readings in the New York Times, so it is nice to see a logic and critical thinking text use real language that students can understand and follow without the constant need of a dictionary.

Reviewed by Rebecca Owen, Adjunct Professor, Writing, Chemeketa Community College on 6/20/17

This textbook is quite thorough--there are conversational explanations of argument structure and logic. I think students will be happy with the conversational style this author employs. Also, there are many examples and exercises using current... read more

This textbook is quite thorough--there are conversational explanations of argument structure and logic. I think students will be happy with the conversational style this author employs. Also, there are many examples and exercises using current events, funny scenarios, or other interesting ways to evaluate argument structure and validity. The third section, which deals with logical fallacies, is very clear and comprehensive. My only critique of the material included in the book is that the middle section may be a bit dense and math-oriented for learners who appreciate the more informal, informative style of the first and third section. Also, the book ends rather abruptly--it moves from a description of a logical fallacy to the answers for the exercises earlier in the text.

The content is very reader-friendly, and the author writes with authority and clarity throughout the text. There are a few surface-level typos (Starbuck's instead of Starbucks, etc.). None of these small errors detract from the quality of the content, though.

One thing I really liked about this text was the author's wide variety of examples. To demonstrate different facets of logic, he used examples from current media, movies, literature, and many other concepts that students would recognize from their daily lives. The exercises in this text also included these types of pop-culture references, and I think students will enjoy the familiarity--as well as being able to see the logical structures behind these types of references. I don't think the text will need to be updated to reflect new instances and occurrences; the author did a fine job at picking examples that are relatively timeless. As far as the subject matter itself, I don't think it will become obsolete any time soon.

The author writes in a very conversational, easy-to-read manner. The examples used are quite helpful. The third section on logical fallacies is quite easy to read, follow, and understand. A student in an argument writing class could benefit from this section of the book. The middle section is less clear, though. A student learning about the basics of logic might have a hard time digesting all of the information contained in chapter two. This material might be better in two separate chapters. I think the author loses the balance of a conversational, helpful tone and focuses too heavily on equations.

Consistency rating: 4

Terminology in this book is quite consistent--the key words are highlighted in bold. Chapters 1 and 3 follow a similar organizational pattern, but chapter 2 is where the material becomes more dense and equation-heavy. I also would have liked a closing passage--something to indicate to the reader that we've reached the end of the chapter as well as the book.

I liked the overall structure of this book. If I'm teaching an argumentative writing class, I could easily point the students to the chapters where they can identify and practice identifying fallacies, for instance. The opening chapter is clear in defining the necessary terms, and it gives the students an understanding of the toolbox available to them in assessing and evaluating arguments. Even though I found the middle section to be dense, smaller portions could be assigned.

The author does a fine job connecting each defined term to the next. He provides examples of how each defined term works in a sentence or in an argument, and then he provides practice activities for students to try. The answers for each question are listed in the final pages of the book. The middle section feels like the heaviest part of the whole book--it would take the longest time for a student to digest if assigned the whole chapter. Even though this middle section is a bit heavy, it does fit the overall structure and flow of the book. New material builds on previous chapters and sub-chapters. It ends abruptly--I didn't realize that it had ended, and all of a sudden I found myself in the answer section for those earlier exercises.

The simple layout is quite helpful! There is nothing distracting, image-wise, in this text. The table of contents is clearly arranged, and each topic is easy to find.

Tiny edits could be made (Starbuck's/Starbucks, for one). Otherwise, it is free of distracting grammatical errors.

This text is quite culturally relevant. For instance, there is one example that mentions the rumors of Barack Obama's birthplace as somewhere other than the United States. This example is used to explain how to analyze an argument for validity. The more "sensational" examples (like the Obama one above) are helpful in showing argument structure, and they can also help students see how rumors like this might gain traction--as well as help to show students how to debunk them with their newfound understanding of argument and logic.

The writing style is excellent for the subject matter, especially in the third section explaining logical fallacies. Thank you for the opportunity to read and review this text!

Reviewed by Laurel Panser, Instructor, Riverland Community College on 6/20/17

This is a review of Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking, an open source book version 1.4 by Matthew Van Cleave. The comparison book used was Patrick J. Hurley’s A Concise Introduction to Logic 12th Edition published by Cengage as well as... read more

This is a review of Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking, an open source book version 1.4 by Matthew Van Cleave. The comparison book used was Patrick J. Hurley’s A Concise Introduction to Logic 12th Edition published by Cengage as well as the 13th edition with the same title. Lori Watson is the second author on the 13th edition.

Competing with Hurley is difficult with respect to comprehensiveness. For example, Van Cleave’s book is comprehensive to the extent that it probably covers at least two-thirds or more of what is dealt with in most introductory, one-semester logic courses. Van Cleave’s chapter 1 provides an overview of argumentation including discerning non-arguments from arguments, premises versus conclusions, deductive from inductive arguments, validity, soundness and more. Much of Van Cleave’s chapter 1 parallel’s Hurley’s chapter 1. Hurley’s chapter 3 regarding informal fallacies is comprehensive while Van Cleave’s chapter 4 on this topic is less extensive. Categorical propositions are a topic in Van Cleave’s chapter 2; Hurley’s chapters 4 and 5 provide more instruction on this, however. Propositional logic is another topic in Van Cleave’s chapter 2; Hurley’s chapters 6 and 7 provide more information on this, though. Van Cleave did discuss messy issues of language meaning briefly in his chapter 1; that is the topic of Hurley’s chapter 2.

Van Cleave’s book includes exercises with answers and an index. A glossary was not included.

Reviews of open source textbooks typically include criteria besides comprehensiveness. These include comments on accuracy of the information, whether the book will become obsolete soon, jargon-free clarity to the extent that is possible, organization, navigation ease, freedom from grammar errors and cultural relevance; Van Cleave’s book is fine in all of these areas. Further criteria for open source books includes modularity and consistency of terminology. Modularity is defined as including blocks of learning material that are easy to assign to students. Hurley’s book has a greater degree of modularity than Van Cleave’s textbook. The prose Van Cleave used is consistent.

Van Cleave’s book will not become obsolete soon.

Van Cleave’s book has accessible prose.

Van Cleave used terminology consistently.

Van Cleave’s book has a reasonable degree of modularity.

Van Cleave’s book is organized. The structure and flow of his book is fine.

Problems with navigation are not present.

Grammar problems were not present.

Van Cleave’s book is culturally relevant.

Van Cleave’s book is appropriate for some first semester logic courses.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Reconstructing and analyzing arguments

• 1.1 What is an argument?
• 1.2 Identifying arguments
• 1.3 Arguments vs. explanations
• 1.4 More complex argument structures
• 1.5 Using your own paraphrases of premises and conclusions to reconstruct arguments in standard form
• 1.6 Validity
• 1.7 Soundness
• 1.8 Deductive vs. inductive arguments
• 1.9 Arguments with missing premises
• 1.10 Assuring, guarding, and discounting
• 1.11 Evaluative language
• 1.12 Evaluating a real-life argument

Chapter 2: Formal methods of evaluating arguments

• 2.1 What is a formal method of evaluation and why do we need them?
• 2.2 Propositional logic and the four basic truth functional connectives
• 2.3 Negation and disjunction
• 2.4 Using parentheses to translate complex sentences
• 2.5 “Not both” and “neither nor”
• 2.6 The truth table test of validity
• 2.7 Conditionals
• 2.8 “Unless”
• 2.9 Material equivalence
• 2.10 Tautologies, contradictions, and contingent statements
• 2.11 Proofs and the 8 valid forms of inference
• 2.12 How to construct proofs
• 2.13 Short review of propositional logic
• 2.14 Categorical logic
• 2.15 The Venn test of validity for immediate categorical inferences
• 2.16 Universal statements and existential commitment
• 2.17 Venn validity for categorical syllogisms

Chapter 3: Evaluating inductive arguments and probabilistic and statistical fallacies

• 3.1 Inductive arguments and statistical generalizations
• 3.2 Inference to the best explanation and the seven explanatory virtues
• 3.3 Analogical arguments
• 3.4 Causal arguments
• 3.5 Probability
• 3.6 The conjunction fallacy
• 3.7 The base rate fallacy
• 3.8 The small numbers fallacy
• 3.9 Regression to the mean fallacy
• 3.10 Gambler's fallacy

Chapter 4: Informal fallacies

• 4.1 Formal vs. informal fallacies
• 4.1.1 Composition fallacy
• 4.1.2 Division fallacy
• 4.1.3 Begging the question fallacy
• 4.1.4 False dichotomy
• 4.1.5 Equivocation
• 4.2 Slippery slope fallacies
• 4.2.1 Conceptual slippery slope
• 4.2.2 Causal slippery slope
• 4.3 Fallacies of relevance
• 4.3.1 Ad hominem
• 4.3.2 Straw man
• 4.3.3 Tu quoque
• 4.3.4 Genetic
• 4.3.5 Appeal to consequences
• 4.3.6 Appeal to authority

Answers to exercises Glossary/Index

Ancillary Material

About the book.

This is an introductory textbook in logic and critical thinking. The goal of the textbook is to provide the reader with a set of tools and skills that will enable them to identify and evaluate arguments. The book is intended for an introductory course that covers both formal and informal logic. As such, it is not a formal logic textbook, but is closer to what one would find marketed as a “critical thinking textbook.”

About the Contributors

Matthew Van Cleave ,   PhD, Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, 2007.  VAP at Concordia College (Moorhead), 2008-2012.  Assistant Professor at Lansing Community College, 2012-2016. Professor at Lansing Community College, 2016-

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The Critical Thinking Toolkit The Critical Thinking Toolkit is a comprehensive compendium that equips readers with the essential knowledge and methods for clear, analytical, logical thinking and critique in a range of scholarly contexts and everyday situations. Takes an expansive approach to critical thinking by exploring concepts from other disciplines, including evidence and justification from philosophy, cognitive biases and errors from psychology, race and gender from sociology and political science, and tropes and symbols from rhetoric Follows the proven format of The Philosopher’s Toolkit and The Ethics Toolkit with concise, easily digestible entries, “see also” recommendations that connect topics, and recommended reading lists Allows readers to apply new critical thinking and reasoning skills with exercises and real life examples at the end of each chapter Written in an accessible way, it leads readers through terrain too often cluttered with jargon Ideal for beginning to advanced students, as well as general readers, looking for a sophisticated yet accessible introduction to critical thinking There are no customer reviews for this item yet. Classic Totes Tote bags and pouches in a variety of styles, sizes, and designs , plus mugs, bookmarks, and more! Shipping & Pickup We ship anywhere in the U.S. and orders of $75+ ship free via media mail! Noteworthy Signed Books: Join the Club! Join our Signed First Edition Club (or give a gift subscription) for a signed book of great literary merit, delivered to you monthly. Harvard Square's Independent Bookstore © 2024 Harvard Book Store All rights reserved Contact Harvard Book Store 1256 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 Tel (617) 661-1515 Toll Free (800) 542-READ Email [email protected] View our current hours » Join our bookselling team » We plan to remain closed to the public for two weeks, through Saturday, March 28 While our doors are closed, we plan to staff our phones, email, and harvard.com web order services from 10am to 6pm daily. Store Hours Monday - Saturday: 9am - 11pm Sunday: 10am - 10pm Holiday Hours 12/24: 9am - 7pm 12/25: closed 12/31: 9am - 9pm 1/1: 12pm - 11pm All other hours as usual. Map Find Harvard Book Store » Online Customer Service Shipping » Online Returns » Privacy Policy » Harvard University harvard.edu » Clubs & Services Find My Rep You are here Critical Thinking Your Guide to Effective Argument, Successful Analysis and Independent Study Tom Chatfield - Author, tech philosopher and broadcaster Description What is critical thinking? How do you apply it in your assessments? How do you build a good argument or find evidence?  Critical thinking is a set of techniques. You just need to learn them. This is your personal toolkit for demystifying critical thinking. Clear and focused, it shows you how to sharpen your ability to think critically by developing and honing your skills. You’ll learn how to: Build a solid argument and express your ideas clearly Evaluate evidence and identify errors Understand and account for biased or flawed thinking Become a savvy user of technology Sift through the deluge of digital information Develop confident critical writing. Designed to work with a power pack of digital resources and exercises, you'll find practical and effective tools to think and write critically in an information-saturated age. Whether you're starting your first degree or arriving as an international or mature student, this book equips you with the skills, insights and confidence to succeed. This second edition has been redesigned and fine-tuned with a focus on accessibility: with a new and improved layout to improve the eBook experience, and updated language, examples and further reading recommendations throughout. Supplements  Access a range of free digital resources to support your teaching and student engagement: Welcome video from Tom ('What is Critical Thinking?') YouTube videos introducing each chapter in a nutshell Ten Commandments animated shorts to start discussions Set of BuzzFeed quizzes to test what you (think) you know Downloadable posters to display in the classroom or library Downloadable PowerPoint slides to support teaching Interactive and downloadable workbook to give you even more space to reflect and practice Tom’s book continues to be a real hit with both undergraduate and postgraduate students. This book immerses students into the world of critical thinking using practical applications and experiences. The book triggers a meaningful sensemaking process and demystifies critical reading, thinking and reading, allowing students to develop their skills. Tom has a knack for providing relatable examples to break down the ideas around being a critical reader and writer. This second edition is no different and continues to carefully guide us all with developing our skills of criticality. A must read for anyone engaged with academic writing. An important reading for every course at my institution, because of its vast and relevant topics about critical thinking. A reference for our library as well. An excellent book about the development of critical competences. "Critical Thinking" is a must in the reading lists of graduate and post graduate students given the relevant topics covered and the tasks that can be used for self and group reflection purposes. The easy-to-follow nature of the text makes it appropriate for a wide academic and professional audience. It is helpful in focusing on what critical thinking is, how it works and how helpful it is in education and life This title has been really helpful to support social work degree students make the transistion from level 3 courses to level 4. It has helped them to develop their critical thinking and to understand what is required to be a critical thinker I think this will be a big support to some of my students. A very useful guide to thinking and writing critically. Great for my postgrads i bought a copy; it is a very good bock Very appropriate book for undergraduate students. It takes students through how they can structure their essays with relevant arguments and analysis independently. Preview this book Sample materials & chapters. Chapter 1: Understanding the reasons behind things For instructors Select a purchasing option, order from:. VitalSource Amazon Kindle Google Play Related Products Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We apologise for any delays responding to customers while we resolve this. For further updates please visit our website: https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings . Login Alert > Critical Thinking > References Book contents Critical Thinking Copyright page An Introduction to Critical Thinking Part I Foundations of Critical Thinking Part II Critical Thinking Skills and Dispositions Part III Critical Thinking in Real-World Settings Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 May 2017 Access options Save book to kindle. To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. 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If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive . Critical thinking definition Critical thinking, as described by Oxford Languages, is the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement. Active and skillful approach, evaluation, assessment, synthesis, and/or evaluation of information obtained from, or made by, observation, knowledge, reflection, acumen or conversation, as a guide to belief and action, requires the critical thinking process, which is why it's often used in education and academics. Some even may view it as a backbone of modern thought. However, it's a skill, and skills must be trained and encouraged to be used at its full potential. People turn up to various approaches in improving their critical thinking, like: Developing technical and problem-solving skills Engaging in more active listening Actively questioning their assumptions and beliefs Seeking out more diversity of thought Opening up their curiosity in an intellectual way etc. Is critical thinking useful in writing? Critical thinking can help in planning your paper and making it more concise, but it's not obvious at first. We carefully pinpointed some the questions you should ask yourself when boosting critical thinking in writing: What information should be included? Which information resources should the author look to? What degree of technical knowledge should the report assume its audience has? What is the most effective way to show information? How should the report be organized? How should it be designed? What tone and level of language difficulty should the document have? 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He has been contributing to MyBib since 2018. Skip to main content Update your browser for the best possible experience As of January 1st, 2020, Internet Explorer (versions 11 and below) is no longer supported by Evolve. To get the best possible experience using Evolve, we recommend that you use another web browser. For HESI iNet users click here . Jump to navigation Interested in establishing a writing center at your university or in a community education space? Check out this writing center manual to learn how! This website is a resource center for teaching and learning about American English and American culture developed by the Office of English Language Programs in Washington, D.C. All programs are implemented by  Regional English Language Officers (RELOs)  at American Embassies or Consulates. Please contact your nearest RELO for assistance or click on one of the links below to begin exploring our materials and resources ! 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External links to other Internet sites should not be construed as an endorsement of the views or privacy policies contained therein. 403 IMAGES Critical Thinking : A Complete Guide to Learn How to Solve Big Problems 20 Best Books on Critical Thinking (2022 Review) Critical Thinking : This book includes: Mental Models and Problem 14 Of The Best Critical Thinking Books That Come Packed With Examples Critical Thinking Trends, Networks and Critical Thinking in the 21st Century Revised Ed VIDEO Writing an Academic Report Picture Books &Critical Thinking Academic Books Explains critical reading as looking for ways of thinking II Reading & Writing 11 Academic Writing important questions Unit 3 Descartes' Secret Message That Changes EVERYTHING! COMMENTS The 17 Best Books on Critical Thinking (to Read in 2024) The best books on critical thinking: Table of Contents [ show] 1. Critical Thinking: A Beginner's Guide to Critical Thinking, Better Decision Making, and Problem Solving - Jennifer Wilson. $12.38. Buy on Amazon. 03/08/2024 04:56 pm GMT. As the title says, this book introduces you to the art of critical thinking. The best books on Critical Thinking Thinking from A to Z. by Nigel Warburton. Read. 1 Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World by Carl Bergstrom & Jevin West. 2 Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. 3 Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About The World — And Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling. 4 Black Box Thinking: The Surprising ... 36 Best Books on Critical Thinking Noise by Daniel Kahneman. Being Your Cat by Celia Haddon, Daniel Mills. Bad Science by Ben Goldacre. Dive into the realm of logic and reason with this collection - the most recommended books on critical thinking, curated based on frequent recommendations from leading book blogs and publications. 20 Best Critical Thinking Books of All Time The 20 best critical thinking books recommended by Robin Ince, Michael Shermer, Richard Dawkins and Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Categories Experts Newsletter. BookAuthority; BookAuthority is the world's leading site for book recommendations, helping you discover the most recommended books on any subject. Explore; Home; Best Books; New Books ... 100 Best Critical Thinking Books of All Time In the past decade, Malcolm Gladwell has written three books that have radically changed how we understand our world and ourselves: The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers. Now, in What the Dog Saw, he brings together, for the first time, the best of his writing from The New Yorker over the same period. Critical Thinking (204 books) Critical thinking is self-guided, self-disciplined thinking which attempts to reason at the highest level of quality in a fair-minded way. People who think critically strive to always improve their reasoning abilities and to be aware of the common pitfalls of human reasoning - irrationality, prejudices, biases, distortions, uncritically accepted social rules and taboos, self-interest, and ... A Practical Guide to Critical Thinking A thoroughly updated introduction to the concepts, methods, and standards of critical thinking, A Practical Guide to Critical Thinking: Deciding What to Do and Believe, Second Edition is a unique presentation of the formal strategies used when thinking through reasons and arguments in many areas of expertise. Pursuing an interdisciplinary approach to critical thinking, the book offers a broad ... 20 Best Books on Critical Thinking (2022 Review) 10. A workbook for arguments, Second Edition: A complete course in critical thinking. Check Price on Amazon. This second edition of a highly popular guide on critical thinking contains all major improvements that back the fundamentals of the first edition. 14 Of The Best Critical Thinking Books That Come Packed With Examples Few books in this field approach the topic with personality types in mind. That's why I recommend Stuart Hanscomb's Critical Thinking: The Basics.. Looking at your personal dispositions can help you avoid many of the problems created by emotions and cognitive biases.. You may even want to go further by looking into the OCEAN model to help better understand how your personality might help ... Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and As Director of Research and Professional Development at the Center for Critical Thinking and Chair of the National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking, Dr. Paul is an internationally recognized authority on critical thinking, with eight books and over 200 articles on the subject. Reference List Reference List. The critical thinking literature is vast and growing. Below is a list of some of the things that we're reading at the Critical Thinking Center. Baehr, J. (2013). "Educating for the Intellectual Virtues." Journal of Philosophy of Education 47 (2): 248-262. Bailin, S., et al. (1999). Critical Thinking Reference Books avg rating 3.66 — 110 ratings — published 1993. Want to Read. Rate this book. 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars. Books shelved as critical-thinking-reference: Becoming a Critical Thinker: A Guide for the New Millennium by Robert Todd Carroll, Psychology of Intellige... Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking About the Book. This is an introductory textbook in logic and critical thinking. The goal of the textbook is to provide the reader with a set of tools and skills that will enable them to identify and evaluate arguments. The book is intended for an introductory course that covers both formal and informal logic. The Critical Thinking Toolkit Format Paperback. ISBN 9780470658697. The Critical Thinking Toolkit is a comprehensive compendium that equips readers with the essential knowledge and methods for clear, analytical, logical thinking and critique in a range of scholarly contexts and everyday situations. Takes an expansive approach to critical thinking by exploring concepts from ... A Practical Guide to Critical Thinking A practical introduction to critical thinking across various disciplines Knowing how to think critically about what to believe and what to do is essential for success in both academic and professional environments. A Practical Guide to Critical Thinking introduces readers to the concepts, methods, and standards for thinking critically about reasons and arguments in virtually any area of practice. Critical Thinking Books avg rating 4.29 — 1,296 ratings — published 2009. Want to Read. Rate this book. 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars. Books shelved as critical-thinking: Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking by M. Neil Browne, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Can... Critical Thinking An important reading for every course at my institution, because of its vast and relevant topics about critical thinking. A reference for our library as well. Dr Fernando J Angelino. School of Business Sciences, Polytechnic Institute of Setúbal. ... An excellent book about the development of critical competences. "Critical Thinking" is a must ... References The relationship between critical thinking skills and development of reflective judgment among adolescent and adult women. Paper presented at the 89th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, Los Angeles, August 24-26.Google Scholar Amazon.com: Critical Thinking: Books Master Critical Thinking, Creative, Logic & Problem Solving Skills (4 Books in 1): Develop Deep Thinking Skills to Make Smarter Decisions and Solve Problems in Any Situation. by William Henderson. 52. Paperback. $1997. FREE delivery Thu, Jun 13 on $35 of items shipped by Amazon. Other format: Kindle. 20 Best-Selling Critical Thinking Books of All Time A list of the best-selling critical thinking books of all time, such as Think Smarter, Clear Thinking and Critical Thinking. ... Thinking and Deciding has established itself as a required text and important reference work for students and scholars of human cognition and rationality. In this, the third edition, Jonathan Baron delves further into ... Using Critical Thinking in Essays and other Assignments Critical thinking, as described by Oxford Languages, is the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement. Active and skillful approach, evaluation, assessment, synthesis, and/or evaluation of information obtained from, or made by, observation, knowledge, reflection, acumen or conversation, as a guide to belief and action, requires the critical thinking process ... Critical Thinking: Your Essential Guide by Tom Chatfield Dr Tom Chatfield is a British writer, broadcaster and tech philosopher. Tom's books exploring digital culture—most recently "Critical Thinking" (SAGE Publishing) and "Live This Book!" (Penguin)—have appeared in over two dozen countries and languages. He's currently writing a series of thrillers for Hodder set in the world of the dark net. Free Harvard Referencing Generator [Updated for 2024] A Harvard Referencing Generator is a tool that automatically generates formatted academic references in the Harvard style. It takes in relevant details about a source -- usually critical information like author names, article titles, publish dates, and URLs -- and adds the correct punctuation and formatting required by the Harvard referencing ... Elsevier Education Portal Evolve is a one-stop online portal for healthcare educators and students to access and purchase all of their Elsevier digital teaching & learning materials. American English Find innovative, practical teaching ideas in this quarterly, peer-reviewed journal, which features articles written by teachers from around the world. We're on social media! Join our communities of English language learners and teachers from around the world and stay up-to-date on our programs, events, and content. 14 Best Critical Thinking Books for Beginners The 14 best critical thinking books for beginners. BookAuthority; BookAuthority is the world's leading site for book recommendations, helping you discover the most recommended books on any subject. assignment essay homework paper phd report review speech thesis