From Critical Thinking to Argument with 2020 APA and 2021 MLA Updates: A Portable Guide, Edition 6

Sylvan Barnet · Hugo Bedau · John O'Hara

Sep 2021 · Macmillan Higher Education

About this ebook

This ebook has been updated to provide you with the latest guidance on documenting sources in MLA style and follows the guidelines set forth in the MLA Handbook, 9th edition (April 2021).

From Critical Thinking to Argument is a brief but thorough guide to argument at a great value. This versatile text gives students strategies for critical thinking, reading, and writing and makes argument concepts clear through its treatment of classic and modern approaches to argument, including Aristotelian, Toulmin, and Rogerian argument, as well as visual rhetoric. For today’s increasingly visual learners who are challenged to separate what’s real from what’s not, new activities and visual flowcharts support information literacy, and an appendix of practical Sentence Guides helps students incorporate the moves of academic writers into their own arguments. With just eighteen readings, this affordable guide can stand alone or complement an anthology.

About the author

Sylvan Saul Barnet was born in Brooklyn, New York on December 11, 1926. During World War II, he served in the Army for two years. He received a bachelor's degree in English from New York University in 1948 and a master's degree in 1950 and a doctorate in 1954 from Harvard University. For the next three decades, he taught freshman writing and literature at Tufts University. He wrote or edited numerous textbooks including An Introduction to Literature, A Short Guide to Writing About Literature, A Short Guide to Writing About Art, The Study of Literature: A Handbook of Critical Essays and Terms, and Critical Thinking, Reading and Writing: A Brief Guide to Argument. In the early 1960s, he decided that his students at Tufts University needed an edition of Shakespeare with each play in a separate volume including an introduction and study aids. He presented the idea to editors at the New American Library. The editors approved of the idea and Barnet became the general editor of the Signet Classic Shakespeare series. He was the co-author with William Burto of Zen Ink Paintings, which was published in 1982. He died of cancer on January 11, 2016 at the age of 89.