Explores how we justify our beliefs - and try to influence those of others - both soundly and effectively.

David Zarefsky is Owen L. Coon Professor Emeritus in the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University, Illinois, where he has taught for over forty years. Two of his many books won the Winans-Wichelns Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Rhetoric and Public Address, an award of the National Communication Association: President Johnson's War on Poverty: Rhetoric and History (1986) and Lincoln, Douglas, and Slavery: In the Crucible of Public Debate (1990).

Preface; 1. The argumentative perspective; 2. What arguments look like; 3. The emergence of controversy; 4. Evidence in argumentation; 5. Argument schemes; 6. Fallacies; 7. Case construction; 8. Attack and defense; 9. Language, style, and presentation; 10. Where and why we argue; Appendix: learning argumentation through debate.