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Thank You for Arguing book cover
Thank You for Arguing
What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion
2007
First Published
3.56
Average Rating
436
Number of Pages

Thank You for Arguing is your master class in the art of persuasion, taught by professors ranging from Bart Simpson to Winston Churchill. The time-tested secrets this book discloses include Cicero’s three-step strategy for moving an audience to action—as well as Honest Abe’s Shameless Trick of lowering an audience’s expectations by pretending to be unpolished. But it’s also replete with contemporary techniques such as politicians’ use of “code” language to appeal to specific groups and an eye-opening assortment of popular-culture dodges—including The Yoda Technique, The Belushi Paradigm, and The Eddie Haskell Ploy. Whether you’re an inveterate lover of language books or just want to win a lot more anger-free arguments on the page, at the podium, or over a beer, Thank You for Arguing is for you. Written by one of today’s most popular language mavens, it’s warm, witty, erudite, and truly enlightening. It not only teaches you how to recognize a paralipsis and a chiasmus when you hear them, but also how to wield such handy and persuasive weapons the next time you really, really want to get your own way.

Avg Rating
3.56
Number of Ratings
7,241
5 STARS
24%
4 STARS
32%
3 STARS
26%
2 STARS
11%
1 STARS
6%
goodreads

Author

Jay Heinrichs
Jay Heinrichs
Author · 5 books

Jay Heinrichs is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Thank You for Arguing, published in four editions and 14 languages. The leading modern work on rhetoric, it has been taught in more than 3,000 college rhetoric classes and countless AP English Language & Composition classes. Jay maintains the popular rhetoric and language websites ArgueLab.com and websites Figarospeech.com. In addition, he holds frequent Skype-ins with classes that use his book. When he’s not spreading the gospel of rhetoric, Jay conducts content strategies and persuasion workshops for clients as varied as the Wharton School of Business and NASA. Middlebury College named him a Professor of the Practice of Rhetoric and Oratory. Bloomberg BusinessWeek magazine did a not altogether flattering portrait of him titled Jay Heinrichs’s Powers of Persuasion.

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