Winning Arguments: What Works and Doesn't Work in Politics, the Bedroom, the Courtroom, and the Classroom - Hardcover

Fish, Stanley

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0062226657 ISBN 13: 9780062226655

Publisher: Harper, 2016

Synopsis

“Fish mines cultural touchstones from Milton to ‘Married with Children’ to explain how various types of arguments are structured and how that understanding can lead to victory” — New York Times Book Review

A lively and accessible guide to understanding rhetoric by the world class English and Law professor and bestselling author of How to Write a Sentence.

Filled with the wit and observational prowess that shaped Stanley Fish’s acclaimed bestseller How to Write a Sentence, Winning Arguments guides readers through the “greatest hits” of rhetoric. In this clever and engaging guide, Fish offers insight and outlines the crucial keys you need to win any debate, anywhere, anytime—drawn from landmark legal cases, politics, his own career, and even popular film and television. A celebration of clashing minds and viewpoints, Winning Arguments is sure to become a classic. 

About this title

From the Back Cover

“The wish to escape argument is really the wish to escape language, which is really the wish to escape politics, and is finally the wish to escape mortality—and it won’t matter a whit.”

Ever wonder how gay marriage became accepted over such a short period, after thousands of years of peril? Or how you were dumb enough to get in that last quarrel with your significant other? Or how Donald Trump became the clear frontrunner in the Republican presidential primary? Or how millions continue to deny the devastating effects of global warming? In Winning Arguments, professor and New York Times bestselling author Stanley Fish touches on these hot-button issues as he reveals how successful argument can be used to win over popular opinion.

With wit and wisdom, Fish delves into a wide range of subjects, including Donald Trump, the Supreme Court, the logic of toddlers, Monty Python, the National Football League, Holocaust denial and creationism, the nature of political spin, and the fall of Adam and Eve. 

For students, teachers, lawyers, managers, husbands, wives—indeed, anyone looking to persuade their opponent—Winning Arguments is a fun read and a powerful tool that will stay with readers long after they finish the book. For, as Fish writes,  “argument is unavoidable, argument is interminable, argument is all we have.”

About the Author

Stanley Fish is a professor of law at Florida International University in Miami, and dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois in Chicago. He has also taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins University, and Duke University. He is the author of fourteen books, most recently Fugitive in Flight and Save the World on Your Own Time. He lives in Andes, New York, and New York City.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harper
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0062226657
• ISBN 13: 9780062226655
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 224