Nick's Reviews > Thank You for Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion

This is a highly competent introduction to the ancient Greek and Roman art of rhetoric -- or, as the author is fond of saying -- verbal ju-jitsu. It's that kind of irritating cheerful trendiness that prevented me from giving the book 5 stars. The author is determined to make the book funny and cute. He tells many stories on himself where his attempts at...verbal ju-jitsu...backfire amusingly, usually because his wife sees right through his feeble attempts to manipulate her. All of that got tiresome pretty quickly, as well as the quotes from Homer Simpson and (even) Stalin. One gets the feeling that he's been unable to get anyone's attention over the years, and so he's used to trying way too hard. He's like one of those people you meet at a party who's a little too lively and who won't stop cracking one-liners. The act wears thin after a while. But still, all of rhetoric is spread out for you 'like a patient etherised upon a table'. If you want to learn it, this is a relatively painless way to do so. Like having an amateur Chris Rock teach you a foreign language.