Thank You for Arguing, Third Edition: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion

Now in its fourth edition, Jay Heinrichs’s Thank You for Arguing is your master class in the art of persuasion, taught by history’s greatest professors, ranging from Queen Victoria and Winston Churchill to Homer Simpson and Barack Obama.

Filled with time-tested secrets for emerging victorious from any dispute, including Cicero’s three-step strategy for inspiring action and Honest Abe’s Shameless Trick for lowering an audience’s expectations, this fascinating book also includes an assortment of persuasion tips, such as:

• The Chandler Bing Adjustment: Match your argument to your audience (that is, persuasion is not about you).
• The Belushi Paradigm: Before people will follow you, they have to consider you worth following.
• The Yoda Technique: Transform a banal idiom by switching the words around.

Additionally, Heinrichs considers the dark arts of persuasion, such as politicians’ use of coded language to appeal to specific groups. His sage guide has been fully updated to address our culture of “fake news” and political polarization.