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Father’s Day is coming, but you probably already have his present wrapped and ready, right?

Me either…

I’m not saying it’s down to the wire on the present front, but… I just happened to choose “Father’s Day Gifts” as the category for this week’s Friday Five Challenge. I set my timer for five minutes and prepared to find the perfect book for Dad.

I discovered, if Amazon’s choices are to be believed, that Dad apparently wants books in one of the following three categories:

  1. Grilling cookbooks
  2. Grilling cookbooks (the sequels)
  3. Jack Reacher thrillers numbers 1-5000
Photo credit: 9gag.com

Photo credit: 9gag.com

Frankly, I would be amazed if there is any Dad alive today who willingly consults cookbooks when he takes his manly self to the BBQ. He knows, of course, that testosterone gives him innate knowledge of anything involving power tools or fire, and that Y-chromosome includes microscopic Weber DNA imprinting.

So I was a bit surprised to see, as I scrolled through the various offerings—Hotter than Hot Damn and Hell Yeah—a few that appealed to Dad’s intellectual side. (Amazon must think that is a VERY small side, because the pickings were slim.)

But in my family—where every member wakes up in the morning prepared to argue either side about whether the sun will come up—the winner was obvious as soon as I spotted An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments.

Rosie Amber’s Friday Five challenge is to take ONLY FIVE MINUTES to browse an unfamiliar category and select a book based solely on the cover art.

Book blurb:

1

“A flawless compendium of flaws.” —Alice Roberts, PhD, anatomist, writer, and presenter of The Incredible Human Journey

The antidote to fuzzy thinking, with furry animals!

Have you read (or stumbled into) one too many irrational online debates? Ali Almossawi certainly had, so he wrote An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments! This handy guide is here to bring the internet age a much-needed dose of old-school logic (really old-school, a la Aristotle).

Here are cogent explanations of the straw man fallacy, the slippery slope argument, the ad hominem attack, and other common attempts at reasoning that actually fall short—plus a beautifully drawn menagerie of animals who (adorably) commit every logical faux pas. Rabbit thinks a strange light in the sky must be a UFO because no one can prove otherwise (the appeal to ignorance). And Lion doesn’t believe that gas emissions harm the planet because, if that were true, he wouldn’t like the result (the argument from consequences).

Once you learn to recognize these abuses of reason, they start to crop up everywhere from congressional debate to YouTube comments—which makes this geek-chic book a must for anyone in the habit of holding opinions.

 

BUY LINKS:

AMAZON US | AMAZON UK

Book Title: An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments by Ali Almossawi (Author), Alejandro Giraldo (Illustrator)

Price: $11.62/£7.81 (Hardback only)

Reviews: 64 for a total of 4.3 out of 5 stars (with almost 67% as 5-star)

Pages: 160

Illustrated-book-of-bad-arguments-2-600x542My Analysis: The illustrations look adorable, and reviews seem positive. The message of training yourself to look with a skeptical eye at the messages the media bombards us with is useful, of course. The Amazon page tells us it’s the #1 Best Seller in Philosophy of Logic & Language. (I just want to pause a moment and let us all imagine what the competition must have been for that slot…) But the price is pretty high for only 64 pages, at least half of them illustrations.

BUY or PASS:   PASS

(But don’t worry about Dad. Luckily, Jack Reacher thriller #5001 has just been released…)

Here is Rosie’s Friday Five Challenge. It only took five minutes and a couple more to write up, and was a ton of fun. I hope you’ll consider joining in. All Rosie asks is that you link back to her original post here so we can all join in viewing your challenge results.

AUTHORS – You often only have seconds to get a reader to buy your book, is your book cover and book bio up to it?

Rosie Amber's Friday Five Challenge. Get yourself a cuppa and give yourself 5 minutes.

Rosie Amber’s Friday Five Challenge. Get yourself a cuppa and give yourself 5 minutes.

My Friday Five Challenge is this….. IN ONLY FIVE MINUTES….

  1. Go to any online book supplier,
  2. Randomly choose a category,
  3. Speed through the book covers, choose one which has instantly appealed to your eye,
  4. Read the book Bio/ Description for this book, and any other details.
  5. If there are reviews, check out a couple,
  6. Make an instant decision, would you BUY or PASS?
  7. I’ll be back next week with another Friday Five Challenge, do feel free to join in.