Sarah Becker is the fifth girl to be abducted by a homicidal maniac. Judging from the state of the bodies that have been found, her long hair will be hacked off and she will be tortured. She has about a week to live.

This book, written by a leading expert, and based on the latest research, shows how to apply methods of argumentation to a range of examples.

This book shows how research in linguistic pragmatics, philosophy of language, and rhetoric can be connected through argumentation to analyze a recognizably common strategy used in political and everyday conversation, namely the distortion of another’s words in an argumentative exchange. Straw man argumentation refers to the modification of a position by misquoting, misreporting or wrenching the original speaker’s statements from their context in order to attack them more easily or more effectively. Through 63 examples taken from different contexts (including political and forensic discourses and dialogs) and 20 legal cases, the book analyzes the explicit and implicit types of straw man, shows how to assess the correctness of a quote or a report, and illustrates the arguments that can be used for supporting an interpretation and defending against a distortion. The tools of argumentation theory, a discipline aimed at investigating the uses of arguments by combining insights from pragmatics, logic, and communication, are applied to provide an original account of interpretation and reporting, and to describe and illustrate tactics and procedures that can be used and implemented for practical purposes.. This book will appeal to scholars in the fields of political communication, communication in general, argumentation theory, rhetoric and pragmatics, as well as to people working in public speech, speech writing, and discourse analysis.

Nonsense is the best compilation and study of verbal logical fallacies available anywhere. It is a handbook of the myriad ways we go about being illogical--how we deceive others and ourselves, how we think and argue in ways that are disorderly, disorganized, or irrelevant. Nonsense is also a short course in nonmathematical logical thinking, especially important for students of philosophy and economics. A book of remarkable scholarship, Nonsense is unexpectedly relaxed, informal, and accessible.

The Straw Man is a 1957 novel by the French writer Jean Giono. Its French title is Le Bonheur fou, which means "the mad happiness". The story is set in the 1840s and follows Angelo Pardi as he is caught up in plots leading up to the Italian revolution of 1848. The novel is a standalone sequel to The Horseman on the Roof, which is set earlier and also features Pardi as the main character. Several standalone sequels followed in what is known as the Hussar Cycle. The Straw Man was published in English in 1959, translated by Phyllis Johnson.

Jacob just wanted control. He felt as if he lacked the power to regulate his emotions and how his peers perceived him. When he discovered weight loss, Jacob thought that hed found what was missing. In Straw Man, author Jacob Roth shares his compelling battle with anorexia, a journey that would take him from perceptions of isolation as a young boy to recovering from the most challenging obstacle hed ever face. Anorexia was not just an illnessit was a lifestyle. Jacob cut calories to a point at which hed fast for days at a time. Anorexia nervosa was like a fanatical religious conviction to him, and hed undertake precise rituals that he had to perform correctly to avoid overwhelming fear. If Jacob consumed one too many calories, ate one too many grams of fat, or weighed one too many pounds, he thought that hed defied his religious obligation. In the pursuit of that elusive control, Jacob reduced himself to a man as fragile as one made of straw. Join Jacob as he shares not only how he indoctrinated himself into the lifestyle of an anorexic but how he was able to recover.

For thousands of years, the faithful have honed proselytizing strategies and talked people into believing the truth of one holy book or another. Indeed, the faithful often view converting others as an obligation of their faith—and are trained from an early age to spread their unique brand of religion. The result is a world broken in large part by unquestioned faith. As an urgently needed counter to this tried-and-true tradition of religious evangelism, A Manual for Creating Atheists offers the first-ever guide not for talking people into faith—but for talking them out of it. Peter Boghossian draws on the tools he has developed and used for more than 20 years as a philosopher and educator to teach how to engage the faithful in conversations that will help them value reason and rationality, cast doubt on their religious beliefs, mistrust their faith, abandon superstition and irrationality, and ultimately embrace reason.