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 the book discloses include Cicero’s three-step strategy for moving an audience to actionÑas 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 Eddie Haskell Ploy

Eminem’s Rules of Decorum

The Belushi Paradigm

Stalin’s Timing Secret

The Yoda Technique

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 online 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.

"Magazine executive Heinrichs is a clever, passionate and erudite advocate for rhetoric, the 3,000-year-old art of persuasion, and his user-friendly primer brims with anecdotes, historical and popular-culture references, sidebars, tips and definitions. Heinrichs describes, in 'Control the Tense,' Aristotle's favorite type of rhetoric, the deliberative, pragmatic argument that, rather than bogging down on past offenses, promises a future payoff, e.g., a victim of office backstabbing can refocus the issues on future choices: 'How is blaming me going to help us get the next contract?' To illustrate 'Control the mood,' Heinrichs relates Daniel Webster's successful rhetorical flourish in a murder case: he narrated the horrific murder by following Cicero's dictum that when one argue emotionally, one should speak simply and show great self-control. Readers who want to terrify underlings into submission will learn from Heinrichs that speaking softly while letting your eyes betray cold fury does the trick handily. Thomas Jefferson illustrates Heinrichs's dictum 'Gain the high ground'; keenly aware of an audience's common beliefs and values, Jefferson used a rhetorical commonplace (all people are created equal) to launch the Declaration of Independence. (Feb. 27) " Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

The principles of rhetoric are as vital as ever, as discussed in this book that shows what Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson reveal about the art of persuasion.

JAY HEINRICHS has spent more than 25 years in publishing as a magazine writer, editor, and executive.