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Critical Thinking with Free Student CD and PowerWeb: Critical Thinking
Brooke Noel Moore, Richard Parker
Edition: 7
ISBN: 0072932260
ISBN-13: 9780072932263
Publication Date: 2003-08-05
Format: Paperback
Pages: 640


Customer Reviews (supplied by Amazon.com):
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5

1) Poor Instructional Material... If You Are An Instructor, DO NOT UseThis Book In Your Classes   [Rating: 2 out of 5]
This book is next to useless in helping students to understand fallacies and identify them. It is probably the poorest instructional material I have encountered in all of my years in college. Humor was incorporated into this text in an effort to help students better understand the material, however, that effort is a big failure when it comes to this student, and probably also for many others. Instead of helping, the humor detracts from the instructional value of the material and distracts the student rather than helping him or her to comprehend. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 deal with rhetoric and fallacies, however, I have found those three chapters to be the most incomprehensible and unhelpful chapters in the entire book. I am glad I got a used copy of this book... it is certainly NOT worth the price tag placed on a new copy.

2) Critically Thinking, Critically Funny, Critically Astute!!   [Rating: 5 out of 5]
What an awesome textbook! As a critical reasoning, reading, and writing instructor for twelve years, I have used this textbook, off and on, and I always return to it. There is no other textbook like it, but there are a lot of imitators. It infuses humor, pertinent political events, and very clear critical thinking concepts (like claims, fallacies, credibility, etc.)and presents those ideas in ways that make it a pleasure to read and learn from this book.

3) Rhetorical tricks exposed   [Rating: 4 out of 5]
This is a college textbook that I purchased because I was searching for a book that would review all the rhetorical tricks being used by politicians and special interest groups. For the past six years I've been simultaneously impressed and distressed with the increased sophistication being used to dodge discussing core issues and deceiving people. I believed I needed to further develop my awareness of when someone was using a rhetorical trick to avoid an issue or deceive the public, including myself. Once again excellent reader reviews helped me navigate to and choose this book and I was not disappointed! This book confronted many of the tricks being used by those in the media and using the media to get their message across while avoiding the truth.First off, this book mostly focuses on only one aspect critical thinkers require, and that is identifying and rejecting rhetorical arguments. This book does not have any chapters that would help business people to filter out extraneous information and focus on critical factors even though in fast moving industries, this is a critical skill coming under the umbrella necessary to be labeled a critical thinker in the business world. A better title for this book would have been "Rhetorical Fallacies". So don't buy this book to help you hone your skill in deciding what issues to focus on at work and how to drill-down to essential issues necessary to make good decisions. I highly recommend this book if you are looking to minimize the ability of ever-increasingly sophisticated rhetoric to mislead you. I also now enjoy the fact that I can name most of the rhetorical tricks being used in an attempt to deceive us. This book is a fast read, with many examples that help clarify the principles; many of these examples are humorous. I'll definitely keep this book as a reference to name the ploy being attempted.Because the book is a textbook, the new price is ridiculous. I bought this used through Amazon and had an excellent experience; easily getting a barely marked-up book from a student at a very fair price - ya gotta love Amazon!

4) Wonderful senses of humor!   [Rating: 5 out of 5]
Like Andrew Hallock, it did not escape my notice that all the political references were Republicans or conservatives, and I've grown weary of that bent in academia and would have preferred a more balanced look at politics. Nonetheless, this book was hugely enjoyable for me. While I bought it for a class, I would have read it just for a fun. But then, I'm kind of stickler for critical thinking anyway. Fellow students hated the class and had a hard time with it. IMO, critical thinking skills are woefully lacking in today's world and if I were king, this book would be required reading for everyone.

5) training critical minds   [Rating: 5 out of 5]
Much of what we read, hear and see in today's media reflects the assumption that, since everyone is entitled to express their opinion, all opinions are equally ready for prime time. This book grants the first premise but challenges us to consider whether all opinions are actually created equal. I strongly recommend this text for students, teachers and even talk show hosts who'd like to sharpen their opinion-expressing skills and to understand why they might need some tuning up.For the most part, the philospher/authors use conversational but not patronizing (and frequently witty) language, sharp examples of effective as well as falacious reasoning drawn from contemporary debates and rants, and provide exercises useful for classroom and self-study.It doesn't matter where you stand on the ideological spectrum-- radial anarchist,neo-facist racist or any point between, frequent use of this book will help you to persuade others of your beliefs or convince you to re-examine yours. That's what Critical Thinking (and critical thinking) does.