How to Think Straight: An Introduction to Critical Reasoning

Flew's book is a careful introduction to critical reasoning — the skills of noticing ambiguous terms, identifying implicit assumptions, catching the classic fallacies. The register is academic-philosophical rather than self-help; Flew was a serious philosopher and the book takes its readers seriously as potential thinkers rather than as consumers of thinking tips. For product direction the useful skill is noticing bad reasoning in real time, in meetings and in documents, which is harder than it sounds. Pair with Weston for the complementary construction side of argumentation. A short book, repeatedly worth returning to.