Thank you for Arguing is Jay Heinrichs' 2017 book covering how to be persuasive in argument, writing, and in every day life. In the book, he uses examples ranging from people like Bart Simpson and former British prime minister Winston Churchill. Also, he discusses strategies including Cicero's three-step strategy, Abraham Lincoln's trick of lowering audiences' expectations by making his material seem unpolished, politician's use of "code" language, and popular culture dodges like the Yoda technique and the Belushi paradigm. At the end of the day, this book will help you - particularly younger people - strengthen their arguments.
Upon release, Thank You for Arguing was met with very solid, albeit unremarkable reviews. On Amazon, it has a rating of 3.9 out of 5 stars. On book review aggregating site Goodreads.com, it has a similarly solid review of 3.74 out of 5 stars. Speaking positively of the book, Peter Kimpton of the Guardian wrote, "This entertaining volume is a romp through the rules of rhetoric, a primer in the art of argument. Colourful and instructive, it is broad in its sources."
With that said, some, including this reviewer on Amazon, think the book is inappropriate, "The author, in an apparent effort to be edgy, has created a text that is gratuitously sexual, political, stereotypical, and oft times repetitive. While a college student might possess the ability to discern what is factual versus what is merely opinion, I worry an average sixteen year old might fall victim to the author’s narrative. While the author is clearly both intelligent and clever, he also falls victim to his own hubris. If his goal was to teach the art of persuasion, he probably could have been more persuasive if he had avoided the endless political and sexual references."
