The definitive guide to getting your way, revised and
updated with new material on writing, speaking, framing, and other key tools
for arguing more powerfully
“Cross Cicero with David Letterman and you get Jay Heinrichs.”―Joseph Ellis,
Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Quartet and American
Sphinx
Now in its fourth edition, Jay Heinrichs’s Thank You for Arguing is
your master class in the art of persuasion, taught by history’s greatest
professors, ranging from Queen Victoria and Winston Churchill
to Homer Simpson and Barack Obama.
Filled with time-tested secrets for emerging victorious from any dispute,
including Cicero’s three-step strategy for inspiring action and Honest Abe’s
Shameless Trick for lowering an audience’s expectations, this fascinating
book also includes an assortment of persuasion tips, such as:
• The Chandler Bing Adjustment: Match your argument to your
audience (that is, persuasion is not about you).
• The Belushi Paradigm: Before people will follow you, they have to
consider you worth following.
• The Yoda Technique: Transform a banal idiom by switching the
words around.
Additionally, Heinrichs considers the dark arts of persuasion, such as
politicians’ use of coded language to appeal to specific groups. His sage guide
has been fully updated to address our culture of “fake news” and political
polarization.
Whether you’re a lover of language books or just want to win more anger-free
arguments on the page, at the podium, or over a beer, Thank You
for Arguing is for you. Warm, witty, and truly enlightening, it not
only teaches you how to identify a paraleipsis when you hear it but also how to
wield such persuasive weapons the next time you really, really need to get your
way. This expanded edition also includes a new chapter on how to reset your
audience’s priorities, as well as new and improved ArgueLab games to hone your
skills.
About the Author
Jay Heinrichs spent twenty-six years as a
writer, editor, and magazine-publishing executive before becoming a full-time
advocate for the lost art of rhetoric. He is Professor of the Practice of
Rhetoric and Oratory at Middlebury College and lectures frequently on argument
and persuasion, speaking to audiences ranging from Ivy League business students
to NASA scientists to Southwest Airlines executives. He lives near Middlebury,
Vermont.
