Critical Thinking (PDF)

Critical Thinking: A Concise Guide is a much-needed guide to argument analysis and a clear introduction to thinking clearly and rationally for oneself. Through precise and accessible discussion this book equips students with the essential skills required to tell a good argument from a bad one.

Key features of the book are:

• clear, jargon-free discussion of key concepts in argumentation


• how to avoid common confusions surrounding words such as 'truth', 'knowledge' and 'opinion'


• how to identify and evaluate the most common types of argument


• how to spot fallacies in arguments and tell good reasoning from bad


• chapter summaries, glossaries and useful exercises.

This third edition has been revised and updated throughout, with new exercises, and up-to-date topical examples, including: 'real-world' arguments; practical reasoning; understanding quantitative data, statistics, and the rhetoric used about them; scientific reasoning; and expanded discussion of conditionals, ambiguity, vagueness, slippery slope arguments, and arguments by analogy.

The Routledge Critical Thinking companion website, features a wealth of further resources, including examples and case studies, sample questions, practice questions and answers, and student activities.

Critical Thinking: A Concise Guide is essential reading for anyone, student or professional, at work or in the classroom, seeking to improve their reasoning and arguing skills.