Book research citations

My "critical thinking/decisionmaking/persuasion" book in progress is entitled "I Disagree: Arguing" (© 2012 Bobby Gladd, All Rights Reserved)

I started this project in response to my adjunct faculty teaching experience at UNLV and our community college, along with my experience during that time as a textbook manuscript reviewer for Allyn & Bacon/Longman. I quickly found I had to write a lot of my own ancillary classroom material to "fill in the blanks" and to provide relevant topical material that went beyond the text and standard syllabus. As a manuscript reviewer, it became evident in short order that these professor/authors were all mainly writing to impress each other -- such was/is the imperative of passing "peer review." Whether the material would be of interest or utility to students was a secondary concern.

I think I can add something new, a different and interesting and useful perspective. We shall see.

The hardcopy grist of my research readings, in no particular order (other than updated as accrued over time):

1. You, Inc.: The Art of Selling Yourself
2. Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists
3. More Damned Lies and Statistics: How Numbers Confuse Public Issues
4. Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy
5. Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics
6. Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking
7. On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not
8. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
9. Introduction to logic
10. Ethical Argument: Critical Thinking in Ethics
11. Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain
12. Six Thinking Hats: An essential approach to business management
13. Change or Die: The Three Keys to Change at Work and in Life
14. Critical Thinking: An Introduction
15. Beyond Reason: Using Emotions as You Negotiate
16. Understanding Arguments: An Introduction to Informal Logic
17. On Bullshit
18. On Truth
19. Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing Our Own and Other People's Minds
20. How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life
21. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
22. Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ
23. Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships
24. How Doctors Think
25. Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine
26. The Flight from Science and Reason
27. Rational Choice in an Uncertain World: The Psychology of Judgement and Decision Making
28. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
29. Critical thinking: The analysis of arguments
30. The psychology of law: Integrations and applications
31. Galileo's Revenge: Junk Science In The Courtroom
32. Critical Thinking: An Introduction to the Basic Skills
33. Einstein: His Life and Universe
34. Foundations of Critical Thinking
35. Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases
36. Choices, Values, and Frames
37. Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions
38. The Power of Intuition: How to Use Your Gut Feelings to Make Better Decisions at Work
39. Inside the Brain: Revolutionary Discoveries of How the Mind Works
40. Persuasion: The Art of Getting What You Want
41. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
42. Being Logical: A Guide to Good Thinking
43. Critical Thinking
44. A Civil Tongue
45. Introduction to the Philosophy of Science
46. The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making
47. The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less
48. How to Argue & Win Every Time
49. The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations
50. Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in the Markets and Life
51. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
52. Envisioning Information
53. Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative
54. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
55. Winning Every Time: How to Use the Skills of a Lawyer in the Trials of Your Life
56. The Marriage of Sense and Soul: Integrating Science and Religion
57. Sway: The irrestistible pull of irrational behavior
58. How We Decide
59. Judgment and Decision Making: psychological perspectives
60. Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness
61. Stat Spotting: a field guide to identifying dubious data
62. Predictably Irrational: the hidden forces that shape our decisions
    
63. Switch: how to change things when change is hard
64. Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery
65. Being Wrong: adventures in the margin of error (Wow, what a find this was!)
66. The Upside of Irrationality
67. On Second Thought
68. Sleights of Mind
69. The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience
70. Why Do Humans Reason?
    
71. Thinking, Fast and Slow
72. Medicine in Denial
    

You know you're done when the latest books you study increasingly cite ones you've already read.

I would ask my students, "If, when it's all said and done, your evidence and logic are rock-solid, but you change no minds, what have you truly accomplished? We have more issues to resolve constructively than we have hours in the day. So, we do well to become persuasive communicators, but ones that can effectively sell the TRUTH."

I have long been an avid student of cognition, with special interests in persuasion psychology (e.g., thinking like advertisers and trial lawyers), and the cognitive attributes and liabilities of "expertise" (e.g., thinking like doctors or scientists).

I hope I can add value to the popular and undergrad literature. I will do my best.
___

To my wife

My main squeeze of 39 years has had to take a job requiring that she relocate to Walnut Creek, CA, where we have now kept a small apartment since Sept 2008 (our home is in Las Vegas). I now only get to be with her every month or so for a few days at a time. We call it "the Southwest Airlines / Virgin America Marriage." We are far luckier than a lot of people in this economy, but it just crushes me to be without her so much.

UPDATE: 35610