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Economic forces are everywhere around you. But that doesn't mean you need to passively accept whatever outcome those forces might press upon you. Instead, with these 12 fast-moving and crystal clear lectures, you can learn how to use a small handful of basic nuts-and-bolts principles to turn those same forces to your own advantage.
No skill is more important in today's world than being able to think about, understand, and act on information in an effective and responsible way. What's more, at no point in human history have we had access to so much information, with such relative ease, as we do in the 21st century. But because misinformation out there has increased as well, critical thinking is more important than ever. These 24 rewarding lectures equip you with the knowledge and techniques you need to become a savvier, sharper critical thinker in your professional and personal life.
Bringing together the imaginative strategies of fiction storytelling and new ways of narrating true, real-life events, creative nonfiction is the fastest-growing part of the creative writing world. It's a cutting-edge genre that's reshaping how we write (and read) everything from biographies and memoirs to blogs and public speaking scripts to personal essays and magazine articles.
Eating is an indispensable human activity. As a result, whether we realize it or not, the drive to obtain food has been a major catalyst across all of history, from prehistoric times to the present. Epicure Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin said it best: "Gastronomy governs the whole life of man."
Military history often highlights successes and suggests a sense of inevitability about victory, but there is so much that can be gleaned from considering failures. Study these crucibles of history to gain a better understanding of why a civilization took - or didn't take - a particular path.
Language defines us as a species, placing humans head and shoulders above even the most proficient animal communicators. But it also beguiles us with its endless mysteries, allowing us to ponder why different languages emerged, why there isn't simply a single language, how languages change over time and whether that's good or bad, and how languages die out and become extinct.
Economic forces are everywhere around you. But that doesn't mean you need to passively accept whatever outcome those forces might press upon you. Instead, with these 12 fast-moving and crystal clear lectures, you can learn how to use a small handful of basic nuts-and-bolts principles to turn those same forces to your own advantage.
No skill is more important in today's world than being able to think about, understand, and act on information in an effective and responsible way. What's more, at no point in human history have we had access to so much information, with such relative ease, as we do in the 21st century. But because misinformation out there has increased as well, critical thinking is more important than ever. These 24 rewarding lectures equip you with the knowledge and techniques you need to become a savvier, sharper critical thinker in your professional and personal life.
Bringing together the imaginative strategies of fiction storytelling and new ways of narrating true, real-life events, creative nonfiction is the fastest-growing part of the creative writing world. It's a cutting-edge genre that's reshaping how we write (and read) everything from biographies and memoirs to blogs and public speaking scripts to personal essays and magazine articles.
Eating is an indispensable human activity. As a result, whether we realize it or not, the drive to obtain food has been a major catalyst across all of history, from prehistoric times to the present. Epicure Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin said it best: "Gastronomy governs the whole life of man."
Military history often highlights successes and suggests a sense of inevitability about victory, but there is so much that can be gleaned from considering failures. Study these crucibles of history to gain a better understanding of why a civilization took - or didn't take - a particular path.
Language defines us as a species, placing humans head and shoulders above even the most proficient animal communicators. But it also beguiles us with its endless mysteries, allowing us to ponder why different languages emerged, why there isn't simply a single language, how languages change over time and whether that's good or bad, and how languages die out and become extinct.
Join three literary scholars and award-winning professors as they introduce you to dozens of short masterpieces that you can finish - and engage with - in a day or less. Perfect for people with busy lives who still want to discover-or rediscover-just how transformative an act of reading can be, these 36 lectures range from short stories of fewer than 10 pages to novellas and novels of around 200 pages. Despite their short length, these works are powerful examinations of the same subjects and themes that longer "great books" discuss.
Between 1861 and 1865, the clash of the greatest armies the Western hemisphere had ever seen turned small towns, little-known streams, and obscure meadows in the American countryside into names we will always remember. In those great battles, those streams ran red with blood-and the United States was truly born.
Everyone would benefit from seeing further into the future, whether buying stocks, crafting policy, launching a new product, or simply planning the week's meals. Unfortunately, people tend to be terrible forecasters. As Wharton professor Philip Tetlock showed in a landmark 2005 study, even experts' predictions are only slightly better than chance. However, an important and underreported conclusion of that study was that some experts do have real foresight.
Grammar! For many of us, the word triggers memories of finger-wagging schoolteachers, and of wrestling with the ambiguous and complicated rules of using formal language. But what is grammar? In fact, it's the integral basis of how we speak and write. As such, a refined awareness of grammar opens a world of possibilities for both your pleasure in the English language and your skill in using it, in both speech and the written word.
The Mongol army led by Genghis Khan subjugated more lands and people in 25 years than the Romans did in 400. In nearly every country the Mongols conquered, they brought an unprecedented rise in cultural communication, expanded trade, and a blossoming of civilization.
Richard H. Thaler has spent his career studying the radical notion that the central agents in the economy are humans - predictable, error-prone individuals. Misbehaving is his arresting, frequently hilarious account of the struggle to bring an academic discipline back down to earth - and change the way we think about economics, ourselves, and our world.
In this dynamic and engaging biography, Anthony Everitt plunges us into the fascinating, scandal-ridden world of ancient Rome in its most glorious heyday. Accessible to us through his legendary speeches but also through an unrivaled collection of unguarded letters to his close friend Atticus, Cicero comes to life here as a witty and cunning political operator.
Meet Emily and Paul: The parents of two young children, Emily is the newly promoted VP of marketing at a large corporation while Paul works from home or from clients' offices as an independent IT consultant. Their lives, like all of ours, are filled with a bewildering blizzard of emails, phone calls, yet more emails, meetings, projects, proposals, and plans. Just staying ahead of the storm has become a seemingly insurmountable task.
In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat and civil servant, made a nine-month journey through the eastern United States. The result was Democracy in America, a monumental study of the strengths and weaknesses of the nation’s evolving politics. His insightful work has become one of the most influential political texts ever written on America.
Perception is the foundation of human experience, but few of us understand why we see what we do, much less how. By revealing the startling truths about the brain and its perceptions, Beau Lotto shows that the next big innovation is not a new technology: It is a new way of seeing. In his first major book, Lotto draws on over two decades of pioneering research to explain that our brain didn't evolve to see the world accurately. It can't!
What if charisma could be taught? For the first time, science and technology have taken charisma apart, figured it out and turned it into an applied science: In controlled laboratory experiments, researchers could raise or lower people's level of charisma as if they were turning a dial. What you'll find here is practical magic: unique knowledge, drawn from a variety of sciences, revealing what charisma really is and how it works. You'll get both the insights and the techniques you need to apply this knowledge. The world will become your lab, and every person you meet, a chance to experiment.
Grasp the important ideas that have served as the backbone of philosophy across the ages with this extraordinary 60-lecture series. This is your opportunity to explore the enormous range of philosophical perspectives and ponder the most important and enduring of human questions-without spending your life poring over dense philosophical texts.
What is effective reasoning? And how can it be done persuasively? These questions have been asked for thousands of years, yet some of the best thinking on reasoning and argumentation is recent and represents a break from the past.
These 24 engaging lectures teach you how to reason, how to persuade others that what you think is right, and how to judge and answer the arguments of others - and how they will judge yours. Professor Zarefsky makes argumentation accessible and familiar by breaking it into five easy-to-understand components: The tools of formal logic, while essential and even definitive for mathematics and programming computers, are inadequate to decide most controversial issues.
This course shows more useful approaches. Arguments can be divided into three parts: a claim, evidence, and an inference linking the evidence to the claim. All arguments fall into a handful of distinctive categories, and the same issues are at stake each time one of these distinctive patterns occurs. Three kinds of evidence can be advanced to prove an argument that something is true: objective data, social consensus, and personal credibility. There are six kinds of inference that link evidence to a claim: example, cause, sign, analogy, narrative, and form. How to use and challenge each is explained.
Along the way, you'll look at numerous actual controversies with a perspective that allows you to see the structure of all disputes. In this way, argument becomes an exchange, not just a flurry of words.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
If you could sum up Argumentation: The Study of Effective Reasoning, 2nd Edition in three words, what would they be?
Clear, concise, informative
Which scene was your favorite?
Understanding logical fallacies.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
no.
Any additional comments?
This is an excellent course to take. Interesting right the way through and very dense on content. Argumentation is a pastime of mine, and although I have read much about it, I have never taken any kind of structured course on the subject. These lectures opened up an understanding of the processes, the nomenclature and the method to me on a larger scale than I knew. Very helpful, Already I am applying this new understanding to my every day life, and that's not just in winning arguments with my spouse ;)
74 of 78 people found this review helpful
The professor in this course presented the material with maestri. All the topics are addressed in detail, in a way you can easily follow and generalize to your area of expertise. I dare to say that this is the most complete audiobook on the matter. It covers. The philosophy, the history, the theory, the application and the strategic and tactical aspects of argumentation. Nothing was left out.
If I have to point at flaws in this course , the only one I can come with is that 90% of the examples were taken from presidential speech. A more diverse source of examples would be beneficial in the entertainment aspect. But as teaching tools to convey the point, the examples are perfect.
9 of 9 people found this review helpful
loved it.. I'm always looking for books that it will help me enrich my life with knowledge of productivity, this one was one of them, not many books with this subject and I was able to find it here in Audible .. I just have one complaint, like to take notes some few words wasn't able to understand and had to stop and do some research online, I wish he had spelled those latin words.. my time listening this book was well spend..
3 of 3 people found this review helpful
Very interesting. This should be a required course in every school. Random emotional thoughts or stringing together loose ideas is so much easier than thinking. Most of the book is just common sense, but so often the lack of logic is not apparent. Gave the evening news broadcasts a whole new dimension. With any luck, the book helped tune up my thinking.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful
I enjoyed listening to these lectures. The professor was very articulate and presented the information in a logical and structured manner. Great examples were used making for an enjoyable listen!
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
Professor Zarefsky has a very interesting voice and he uses this fine voice to draw you into the covets he discusses . I enjoyed listening to him very much.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
specifically for improving your Personal performance in your own argumentation. Helpful, but it was not designed for this purpose. I plan on listening again while preparing formal arguments on topics and then using the examples from famous speeches to help me better construct my argument. What I love about this course, and most of The Great Courses for that matter, is the intellectual breadth of the teachers. However, because they're scholarly teachers, rather than public speakers, they're often kind of dry and boring. Anyhow if an in - depth study on all the ways an argument can be constructed then you will not be disappointed.
13 of 17 people found this review helpful
This is truly a "great" course. It is well done, thoughtful, researched, and informative. Zarefsky is great and easy to listen to. I've done this course twice and will likely return to it again at some point.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful
It was a comprehensive and intelligent explanation, but I believe I haven't left it with much more knowledge than I started with. Most of what I did learn were terms to define what I already knew.
6 of 10 people found this review helpful
What made the experience of listening to Argumentation: The Study of Effective Reasoning, 2nd Edition the most enjoyable?
This book shows that argumentation needs not only to be sound, but appropriate to the audience. The strategy, argument line up and terminology used needs to be the most effective to whom you want to reach, and yet we often see arguments that are very sound but ineffective due to lack of these soft skills by the speaker.
This lecturer is fantastic. He's passionate, warm, likeable and competent. His demeanour carried me through some of the more complicated bits.
As far as the content goes:
The course breaks down the components of logic and argumentation and makes the listener familiar with them. Then it demonstrates logic and augmentation of some famous political debates. In doing so through repetition and exposure I felt the content was tedious and challenging at times, sometimes I was just getting through it, but afterwards I am shocked at my skills and ability to cut to the heart of arguments I come across and challenge claims and logic. This has benefited me in all areas as strength of logic is valued in most areas. I think this is a fantastic tool for learning and wished I'd come across it years ago.
The content and lecturer are outstanding and the work 'The Great Courses' do is wonderful for someone like myself who has no time to read and dyslexia but is still very fanatical about learning. However, one still has to endure the embarrassingly pretentious classical trumpet outbursts and audience clapping sound bytes at the beginning of every lecture! Also I feel that any lecture series that names itself 'The Great Courses' can't be that great. It's all transparently socially aspiring and an appeal to the grandiosity of the archetypal university which falls flat as insincere, arrogant and pompous. Further, judging by the reviews of many other listeners of their lectures on audible there are very few who these tactics have the desired affect on. However this doesn't invalidate the courses that have to be examined on a case by case basis and this pomposity is a small price to pay for the content. I mention it here more to change 'The Great Courses' approach and let off some steam.
17 of 18 people found this review helpful
Clearly a knowledgeable and passionate individual in the field. Experience Tells. What a brilliant academic.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
very good and clear presentation style, useful examples and the explanation of the subject was thorough and well structured
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
learning argumentation from a generic stance
helped me to think about the differences and similarities between faculties such as law and science
It's great if you want to disect arguments down to their fine detail and if you want to understand the different parts of arguments. Good for debators or anyone that needs to structure arguments in their profession... couldn't see any practical application for day-to-day life.
1 of 3 people found this review helpful
You'll love this. Toulmin is presented in solid detail- this isn't obvious from the blurb but his ideas and their application get a very thorough going over. This is argumentation and informal logic application for law, human rights, academia, science, social work, politics and just about anywhere else real arguments are constructed and let loose in the world.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful