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The 17 Best Books on Critical Thinking (to Read in 2024)

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The aim of improving your skill of critical thinking isn’t just to be able to reason and give logical arguments about a subject skillfully; your goal is to get to the right answer, to make the right decisions and choices for yourself and others.

Critical thinking helps you:

First , improve the quality of your decisions and judgments, and reevaluate your beliefs objectively.

The human mind is rarely objective. However, mastering the skill of critical thinking keeps your mind objective, at least about those things based on facts.

Take for example the beliefs you have about yourself; Some are based on facts, some on subjective (negative) opinions of others.

Second , become an independent thinker (learn to think for yourself); take ownership of your values, beliefs, judgments, and decisions.

Mastering critical thinking is essential , especially in our modern times, because you must:

  • Make a tone of decisions every day;
  • Think and come to the right conclusion fast;
  • Solve (mostly alone) your problems and issues;
  • Weigh carefully facts and information you receive from the dozens of sources you have at your disposal;
  • Reevaluate your strategies, beliefs, and habits periodically.

Critical thinking is a skill that you must learn; you’re not born with it. To make your journey a little easier, we’ve gathered the best critical thinking books so you can learn from the masters. Get inspired to become a critical thinker in no time!

The best books on critical thinking:

Table of Contents

1. Critical Thinking: A Beginner’s Guide to Critical Thinking, Better Decision Making, and Problem Solving – Jennifer Wilson

2. wait, what: and life’s other essential questions- james e. ryan, 3. think smarter: critical thinking to improve problem-solving and decision-making skills – michael kallet, 4. brain power: learn to improve your thinking skills – karl albrecht, 5. the art of thinking clearly – rolf dobelli, 6. being logical: a guide to good thinking – d.q. mcinerny, 7. predictably irrational, revised and expanded edition: the hidden forces that shape our decisions – dr. dan ariely, 8. a more beautiful question: the power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas – warren berger, 9. a rulebook for arguments – anthony weston, 10. thinking, fast and slow – daniel kahneman, 11. the organized mind: thinking straight in the age of information overload – daniel j. levitin, 12. don’t believe everything you think: the 6 basic mistakes we make in thinking – thomas e. kida, 13. the decision book: 50 models for strategic thinking – mikael krogerus, roman tschäppeler, philip earnhart, jenny piening, 14. weaponized lies: how to think critically in the post-truth era – daniel j. levitin, 15. the demon-haunted world: science as a candle in the dark paperback – carl sagan, ann druyan, 16. how to think about weird things: critical thinking for a new age – theodore schick, lewis vaughn, 17. the 5 elements of effective thinking – edward b. burger, michael starbird.

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As the title says, this book introduces you to the art of critical thinking. You’ll discover in it:

  • What is critical thinking in practice,
  • The different thought processes of critical thinking,
  • How will your life be better mastering critical thinking,
  • The things your brain needs to enjoy exercising critical thinking,
  • Techniques you can use for solving problems,
  • How to become a better decision maker, Strategies to use in your critical thinking processes,
  • Ways to make good decisions when more people (not just you) are involved,
  • Tips to frame your questions in order to maximize the efficiency of your critical thinking.

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Wisdom comes from observation, learning, practice, and asking the right questions.

Using examples from history, politics, and his own personal life, James e Ryan shows you the importance of knowing how to:

  • Ask questions and gain a better understanding,
  • Get to be more curious,
  • Push yourself to take action,
  • Make your relationship stronger,
  • And stay focused on the important things in life.

Related:  Critical Thinking Examples

The book starts with the five fundamental questions:

  • Couldn’t we at least…?
  • How can I help…?
  • What truly matters….?

Knowing how to formulate, address, and deliver the right questions doesn’t leave room for misunderstandings, misinterpretations; asking the wrong questions will most probably give you a wrong answer.

This book (Wait, What?: And Life’s Other Essential Questions) will make you feel (more) courageous; after all, asking questions thanks courage. Asking yourself and others the right questions helps you make informed decisions and decisive action.

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This book is a guide on how to train your brain to work even more for you. The author (Michael Kallet) is a critical thinking trainer and coach and gives you a practical set of tools and techniques for critical thinking in your day-to-day life and business.

If you want a clear, actionable step by step program to:

  • Improve your critical thinking skills,
  • A better understanding of complex problems and concepts,
  • And how to put them in practice, then this book is for you.

Learn how to discover the real issues that need a solution, so you don’t waste your time in trying to solve imaginary problems. Increase your mental toughness, useful and productive thought.

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In this book, Karl Albrecht shows you how to:

  • Build your mental strength,
  • Think more clearly logically and creative,
  • Improve your memory,
  • Solve problems,
  • Make decisions more effectively.

Karl Albrecht talks in this book about the six functional abilities you need to have and become more adaptable and an innovative thinker.

The book is packed with practical exercises, fascinating illustrations, games, and puzzles to improve your mental capabilities.

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The art of thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli is a window into human psychology and reasoning; how we:

  • Make decisions;
  • Evaluate choices and options;
  • Develop cognitive biases.

This book helps you notice and recognize erroneous thinking and make better choices and decisions, change unwanted behaviors and habits.

It will change the way you think about yourself and life in general because you have in this book 99 short chapters with examples of the most common errors of judgment and how to rectify them.

If you wish to think more clearly, make better decisions and choices, reevaluate your biases, and feel better about yourself, this book is for you.

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When you decide you want to study the field of logic more closely and improve your critical thinking, this book might be exactly what you need. It’s written clearly and concisely laying out for you the basic building blocks of logic and critical thinking.

The ancient civilizations understood better than us how important is to study logic and rhetoric. With the help of this book, you’ll bring back into your life these essential things that our modern society forgot and missed to teach you as a child.

Having increased logical thinking doesn’t mean to ignore your emotions. It means to start from your emotions and together, (emotions and logic) to take better decisions and see more clearly your choices to move forward in life.

books on critical thinking quora

“Predictably Irrational, The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions” is a book packed with examples of how:

  • Irrational are our choices;
  • We make decisions on impulse;
  • We fool ourselves with optimism- “that must work for me.”

The author presents you, in this book, a large number of mental traps and flawed tendencies which can make your life harder.

After reading this book, you’ll be better informed about a variety of human flaws and how to avoid being trapped by irrational thinking. You’ll be better prepared to make decisions and choices based more on facts rather than subjective personal opinions.

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Knowing how to ask the right questions is determining your success about many things in your life:

  • Influencing others,
  • Getting out of tricky situations,
  • Reevaluating your beliefs,
  • Offering yourself and others compassion,
  • Overcoming mistakes and fears.

Warren Berger shows you in this book examples of people who are successful (partially) because they are experts in asking questions and don’t have preconceived ideas about what the answers should be.

This book helps you avoid wasting your innovative and brilliant ideas by presenting them in the same way over and over and getting nowhere over and over.

Asking yourself (and others) the right questions gives you the opportunity to display your ideas in a way that those around you feel compelled to listen.

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This book is impressive because, Anthony Weston gives you a lot of excellent and practical advice, ordered in a logical and clear manner.

The examples in this book are realistic and useful, ranging from deductive to oral arguments, from argumentative essays to arguments by analogy.

Once you read this book you’ll want to have it on hand to sort out all sorts of situations you’ll encounter in your day-to-day life.

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Daniel Kahneman, the author of this book, is a renowned psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in economics.

In this book, you will discover where you can and cannot trust your intuition; how to use the two systems that drive the way you think.

The first system is fast, intuitive, and emotional; the second system is slower, based on facts, and more logical.

The author argues that knowing how to use these two systems can make a huge difference in how you:

  • Design your strategies,
  • Predict consequences,
  • Avoid cognitive biases,
  • (and even simple things like) choosing the colors for your home office.

If you want to improve your critical thinking, know when you should use logic (instead of using emotions), and become mentally stronger this book is definitely for you.

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Critical thinking can’t be created in a cluttered mind. It’s like trying to prepare a gourmet meal for your loved ones in a cramped and dysfunctional kitchen.

As if is not enough all the information you store in your mind from what you personally experience every day, our modern times forcefully adds to that information a lot of junk.

The book “The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload” by Daniel J. Levitin will help you sort out and organized your thoughts with the help of the four components in the human attentional system:

  • Mind wandering mode;
  • Central executive mode;
  • Attentional filter;
  • Attentional switch.

The book is showing you how you can improve your critical thinking and make better decisions concerning many areas of your life.

This book can (really) change your life if you’re dealing with procrastination, multitasking, the inability to switch off and block the outside world.

All in all, you’ll be better prepared to think straight in the age of information overload.

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Thomas E. Kida talks in this book very elegantly about the six basic mistakes your thinking can make.

  • The first mistake is being mesmerized by stories and ignoring the facts or statistics.
  • The second mistake is searching to confirm what we already know or believe.
  • The third mistake is to discount the role that chance and coincidence play in our life.
  • The fourth mistake is believing that what you see it’s always the reality.
  • The fifth mistake is to oversimplify things.
  • The sixth mistake is to believe (trust) faulty memories.

This book can be for you an eye-opener into critical thinking, accepting who you are as you are, and improving the way you choose and make decisions.

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Did you know you have a strategy for everything you do? From brushing your teeth to making new friends? From choosing a career to dealing with difficult people?

Considering you have a strategy for everything you do, it’s only logical the try to improve every day the way you develop your strategies and don’t leave it to chance, habit, or convenience.

“The Decision Book: 50 Models for Strategic Thinking” can improve your critical thinking and help you make your life easier and more enjoyable.

This book is interactive and provokes you to think about some of the strategies that don’t bring you the results you want.

It contains 58 illustrations offering summaries for known strategies such as the Rubber Band Model, the Personal Performance Model, and the Black Swan Model.

This book is for you if you want to improve the flexibility of your thinking, accept challenges more comfortable, feel more in control of your decisions and choices.

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From this book, by Daniel Levitin, you’ll learn how to think critically and avoid being manipulated by things like misleading statistics and graphics, extreme view, or fake news.

The book contains three main sections:

  • Evaluating numbers – how to read statistics and data to find out what lurks underneath and make a more objective analysis
  • Evaluating words – how to assess the information you receive from experts, understanding the difference between incidence and prevalence, risk perceptions, and probabilistic thinking
  • Evaluating the world – how to interpret scientific methods for different types of reasoning (induction, deduction, abduction)

This book will help you improve your critical thinking providing you with a lot of food for thought.

You know how in a criminal trial they call two experts that have divergent opinions on the same facts? Depending on whose side they are? This book teaches you to see the truth.

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Although written in the 1990s, this bestseller book is still relevant in today’s society.

With both intelligence and compassion, Carl Sagan lays out the importance of education, logic, and science. This book will show you a ton of practical skills for assessing arguments, recognizing logical fallacies, and applying the scientific method.

Sagan felt that reason and logic could make the world a better place.

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This book contains invaluable instructions on logic and reason using critical thinking, without being dull or difficult to understand.

Schick and Vaughn effectively laid out the key elements on how to assess evidence, sort through reasons, and recognize when a claim is likely to be accurate, making this book an absolute must-read for all students.

If you want to be better at decision-making based on sound evidence and argument, then this book is for you.

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If you ever found yourself stuck on a problem, or having trouble in forming new ideas, this book will guide you in finding creative solutions to life’s difficult challenges.

This book emphasizes the value of effective thinking, how it can be mastered, and how to integrate it into everyday life.

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Carmen Jacob

Best Books on Critical Thinking

Dive into the realm of logic and reason with this collection – the most recommended books on critical thinking, curated based on frequent recommendations from leading book blogs and publications..

Thinking, Fast and Slow book cover

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Philosophy Books

The best books on critical thinking, recommended by nigel warburton.

Thinking from A to Z by Nigel Warburton

Thinking from A to Z by Nigel Warburton

Do you know your straw man arguments from your weasel words? Nigel Warburton , Five Books philosophy editor and author of Thinking from A to Z,  selects some of the best books on critical thinking—and explains how they will help us make better-informed decisions and construct more valid arguments.

Interview by Cal Flyn , Deputy Editor

Thinking from A to Z by Nigel Warburton

Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World by Carl Bergstrom & Jevin West

The best books on Critical Thinking - Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

The best books on Critical Thinking - Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About The World — And Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling

Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About The World — And Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling

The best books on Critical Thinking - Black Box Thinking: The Surprising Truth About Success by Matthew Syed

Black Box Thinking: The Surprising Truth About Success by Matthew Syed

The best books on Critical Thinking - The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli

The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli

The best books on Critical Thinking - Critical Thinking: Your Guide to Effective Argument, Successful Analysis and Independent Study by Tom Chatfield

Critical Thinking: Your Guide to Effective Argument, Successful Analysis and Independent Study by Tom Chatfield

The best books on Critical Thinking - Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World by Carl Bergstrom & Jevin West

1 Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World by Carl Bergstrom & Jevin West

2 thinking, fast and slow by daniel kahneman, 3 factfulness: ten reasons we're wrong about the world — and why things are better than you think by hans rosling, 4 black box thinking: the surprising truth about success by matthew syed, 5 the art of thinking clearly by rolf dobelli, 6 critical thinking: your guide to effective argument, successful analysis and independent study by tom chatfield.

I t’s been just over two years since you explained to us what critical thinking is all about. Could you update us on any books that have come out since we first spoke?

Calling Bullshit by Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West started life as a course at the University of Washington. It is a book—a handbook really—written with the conviction that bullshit, particularly the kind that is circulated on the Internet, is damaging democracy , and that misinformation and disinformation can have very serious consequences. Bullshitters don’t care about truth. But truth is important, and this book shows why. It is focussed on examples from science and medicine, but ranges more widely too. It’s a lively read. It covers not just verbal bullshit, bullshit with statistics (particularly in relation to big data) and about causation, but also has a chapter on bullshit data visualisations that distract from the content they are about, or present that data in misleading ways. Like all good books on critical thinking this one includes some discussion of the psychology of being taken in by misleading contributions to public debate.

In How To Make the World Add Up , Tim Harford gives us ten rules for thinking better about numbers, together with a Golden Rule (‘Be curious’). Anyone who has listened to his long-running radio series More or Less will know how brilliant Tim is at explaining number-based claims – as I read it, I hallucinated Tim’s reassuring, sceptical, reasonable, amused, and  patient voice. He draws on a rich and fascinating range of examples to teach us (gently) how not to be taken in by statistics and poorly supported claims. There is some overlap with Calling Bullshit , but they complement each other. Together they provide an excellent training in how not to be bamboozled by data-based claims.

[end of update. The original interview appears below]

___________________________

We’re here to talk about critical thinking. Before we discuss your book recommendations, I wonder if you would first explain: What exactly is critical thinking, and when should we be using it?

There’s a whole cluster of things that go under the label ‘critical thinking’. There’s what you might call formal logic , the most extreme case of abstractions. For example take the syllogism: if all men are mortal, and Socrates is a man, you can deduce from that structure of arguments that Socrates is mortal. You could put anything in the slots of ‘men,’ ‘Socrates,’ ‘mortal’, and whatever you put in, the argument structure remains valid. If the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. That kind of logic, which can be represented using letters and signs rather than words, has its place. Formal logic is a quasi-mathematical (some would say mathematical) subject.

But that’s just one element of critical thinking. Critical thinking is broader, though it encompasses that. In recent years, it’s been very common to include discussion of cognitive biases—the psychological mistakes we make in reasoning and the tendencies we have to think in certain patterns which don’t give us reliably good results. That’s another aspect: focussing on the cognitive biases is a part of what’s sometimes called ‘informal logic’, the sorts of reasoning errors that people make, which can be described as fallacious. They’re not, strictly speaking, logical fallacies, always. Some of them are simply psychological tendencies that give us unreliable results.

The gambler’s fallacy is a famous one: somebody throwing a die that isn’t loaded has thrown it three times without getting a six, and then imagines that, by some kind of law of averages, the fourth time they’re more likely to get a six, because they haven’t yet got one yet. That’s just a bad kind of reasoning, because each time that you roll the dice, the odds are the same: there’s a one in six chance of throwing a six. There’s no cumulative effect and a dice doesn’t have a memory. But we have this tendency, or certainly gamblers often do, to think that somehow the world will even things out and give you a win if you’ve had a series of losses. That’s a kind of informal reasoning error that many of us make, and there are lots of examples like that.

I wrote a little book called Thinking from A to Z which was meant to name and explain a whole series of moves and mistakes in thinking. I included logic, some cognitive biases, some rhetorical moves, and also (for instance) the topic of pseudo-profundity, whereby people make seemingly deep statements that are in fact shallow. The classical example is to give a seeming paradox—to say, for example ‘knowledge is just a kind of ignorance,’ or ‘virtue is only achieved through vice.’ Actually, that’s just a rhetorical trick, and once you see it, you can generate any number of such ‘profundities’. I suppose that would fall under rhetoric, the art of persuasion: persuading people that you are a deeper thinker than you are. Good reasoning isn’t necessarily the best way to persuade somebody of something, and there are many devious tricks that people use within discussion to persuade people of a particular position. The critical thinker is someone who recognises the moves, can anatomise the arguments, and call them to attention.

So, in answer to your question: critical thinking is not just pure logic . It’s a cluster of things. But its aim is to be clear about what is being argued, what follows from the given evidence and arguments, and to detect any cognitive biases or rhetorical moves that may lead us astray.

Many of the terms you define and illustrate in Thinking from A to Z— things like ‘straw man’ arguments and ‘weasel words’—have been creeping into general usage. I see them thrown around on Twitter. Do you think that our increased familiarity with debate, thanks to platforms like Twitter, has improved people’s critical thinking or made it worse?

I think that improving your critical thinking can be quite difficult. But one of the ways of doing it is to have memorable labels, which can describe the kind of move that somebody’s making, or the kind of reasoning error, or the kind of persuasive technique they’re using.

For example, you can step back from a particular case and see that somebody’s using a ‘weak analogy’. Once you’re familiar with the notion of a weak analogy, it’s a term that you can use to draw attention to a comparison between two things which aren’t actually alike in the respects that somebody is implying they are. Then the next move of a critical thinker would be to point out the respects in which this analogy doesn’t hold, and so demonstrate how poor it is at supporting the conclusion provided. Or, to use the example of weasel words—once you know that concept, it’s easier to spot them and to speak about them.

Social media, particularly Twitter, is quite combative. People are often looking for critical angles on things that people have said, and you’re limited in words. I suspect that labels are probably in use there as a form of shorthand. As long as they’re used in a precise way, this can be a good thing. But remember that responding to someone’s argument with ‘that’s a fallacy’, without actually spelling out what sort of fallacy it is supposed to be, is a form of dismissive rhetoric itself.

There are also a huge number of resources online now which allow people to discover definitions of critical thinking terms. When I first wrote Thinking from A to Z , there weren’t the same number of resources available. I wrote it in ‘A to Z’ form, partly just as a fun device that allows for lots of cross references, but partly because I wanted to draw attention to the names of things. Naming the moves is important.

“People seem to get a kick out of the idea of sharing irrelevant features—it might be a birthday or it might be a hometown—with somebody famous. But so what?”

The process of writing the book improved my critical thinking quite a lot, because I had to think more precisely about what particular terms meant and find examples of them that were unambiguous. That was the hardest thing, to find clear-cut examples of the various moves, to illustrate them. I coined some of the names myself: there’s one in there which is called the ‘Van Gogh fallacy,’ which is the pattern of thought when people say: ‘Well, Van Gogh had red hair, was a bit crazy, was left-handed, was born on the 30th of March, and, what do you know, I share all those things’—which I do happen to do—‘and therefore I must be a great genius too.’

I love that. Well, another title that deals with psychological biases is the first critical thinking book that you want to discuss, Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow . Why did you choose this one?

This is an international bestseller by the Nobel Prize-winning behavioural economist—although he’s principally a psychologist—Daniel Kahneman. He developed research with Amos Tversky, who unfortunately died young. I think it would have been a co-written book otherwise. It’s a brilliant book that summarizes their psychological research on cognitive biases (or its patterns of thinking) which all of us are prone to, which aren’t reliable.

There is a huge amount of detail in the book. It summarizes a lifetime of research—two lifetimes, really. But Kahneman is very clear about the way he describes patterns of thought: as using either ‘System One’ or ‘System Two.’ System One is the fast, intuitive, emotional response to situations where we jump to a conclusion very quickly. You know: 2 + 2 is 4. You don’t think about it.

System Two is more analytical, conscious, slower, methodical, deliberative. A more logical process, which is much more energy consuming. We stop and think. How would you answer 27 × 17? You’d have to think really hard, and do a calculation using the System Two kind of thinking. The problem is that we rely on this System One—this almost instinctive response to situations—and often come out with bad answers as a result. That’s a framework within which a lot of his analysis is set.

I chose this book because it’s a good read, and it’s a book you can keep coming back to—but also because it’s written by a very important researcher in the area. So it’s got the authority of the person who did the actual psychological research. But it’s got some great descriptions of the phenomena he researches, I think. Anchoring, for instance. Do you know about anchoring?

I think so. Is that when you provide an initial example that shapes future responses? Perhaps you’d better explain it.

That’s more or less it. If you present somebody with an arbitrary number, psychologically, most people seem prone when you ask them a question to move in the direction of that number. For instance, there’s an experiment with judges. They were being asked off the cuff: What would be a good sentence for a particular crime, say shoplifting? Maybe they’d say it would be a six-month sentence for a persistent shoplifter.

But if you prime a judge by giving an anchoring number—if you ask, ‘Should the sentence for shoplifting be more than nine months?’ They’re more like to say on average that the sentence should be eight months than they would have been otherwise. And if you say, ‘Should it be punished by a sentence of longer than three months?’ they’re more likely to come down in the area of five , than they would otherwise.

So the way you phrase a question, by introducing these numbers, you give an anchoring effect. It sways people’s thinking towards that number. If you ask people if Gandhi was older than 114 years old when he died, people give a higher answer than if you just asked them: ‘How old was Gandhi when he died?’

I’ve heard this discussed in the context of charity donations. Asking if people will donate, say, £20 a month returns a higher average pledge than asking for £1 a month.

People use this anchoring technique often with selling wine on a list too. If there’s a higher-priced wine for £75, then somehow people are more drawn to one that costs £40 than they would otherwise have been. If  that was the most expensive one on the menu, they wouldn’t have been drawn to the £40 bottle, but just having seen the higher price, they seem to be drawn to a higher number. This phenomenon occurs in many areas.

And there are so many things that Kahneman covers. There’s the sunk cost fallacy, this tendency that we have when we give our energy, or money, or time to a project—we’re very reluctant to stop, even when it’s irrational to carry on. You see this a lot in descriptions of withdrawal from war situations. We say: ‘We’ve given all those people’s lives, all that money, surely we’re not going to stop this campaign now.’ But it might be the rational thing to do. All that money being thrown there, doesn’t mean that throwing more in that direction will get a good result. It seems that we have a fear of future regret that outweighs everything else. This dominates our thinking.

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What Kahneman emphasizes is that System One thinking produces overconfidence based on what’s often an erroneous assessment of a situation. All of us are subject to these cognitive biases, and that they’re extremely difficult to remove. Kahneman’s a deeply pessimistic thinker in some respects; he recognizes that even after years of studying these phenomena he can’t eliminate them from his own thinking. I interviewed him for a podcast once , and said to him: ‘Surely, if you teach people critical thinking, they can get better at eliminating some of these biases.’ He was not optimistic about that. I’m much more optimistic than him. I don’t know whether he had empirical evidence to back that up, about whether studying critical thinking can increase your thinking abilities. But I was surprised how pessimistic he was.

Interesting.

Unlike some of the other authors that we’re going to discuss . . .

Staying on Kahneman for a moment, you mentioned that he’d won a Nobel Prize, not for his research in psychology per se but for his influence on the field of economics . His and Tversky’s ground-breaking work on the irrationality of human behaviour and thinking forms the spine of a new field.

Let’s look at Hans Rosling’s book next, this is Factfulness . What does it tell us about critical thinking?

Rosling was a Swedish statistician and physician, who, amongst other things, gave some very popular TED talks . His book Factfulness , which was published posthumously—his son and daughter-in-law completed the book—is very optimistic, so completely different in tone from Kahneman’s. But he focuses in a similar way on the ways that people make mistakes.

We make mistakes, classically, in being overly pessimistic about things that are changing in the world. In one of Rosling’s examples he asks what percentage of the world population is living on less than $2 a day. People almost always overestimate that number, and also the direction in which things are moving, and the speed in which they’re moving. Actually, in 1966, half of the world’s population was in extreme poverty by that measure, but by 2017 it was only 9%, so there’s been a dramatic reduction in global poverty. But most people don’t realise this because they don’t focus on the facts, and are possibly influenced by what they may have known about the situation in the 1960s.

If people are asked what percentage of children are vaccinated against common diseases, they almost always underestimate it. The correct answer is a very high proportion, something like 80%. Ask people what the life expectancy for every child born today is, the global average, and again they get it wrong. It’s over 70 now, another surprisingly high figure. What Rosling’s done as a statistician is he’s looked carefully at the way the world is.

“Pessimists tend not to notice changes for the better”

People assume that the present is like the past, so when they’ve learnt something about the state of world poverty or they’ve learnt about health, they often neglect to take a second reading and see the direction in which things are moving, and the speed with which things are changing. That’s the message of this book.

It’s an interesting book; it’s very challenging. It may be over-optimistic. But it does have this startling effect on the readers of challenging widely held assumptions, much as Steven Pinker ‘s The Better Angels of Our Nature has done. It’s a plea to look at the empirical data, and not just assume that you know how things are now. But pessimists tend not to notice changes for the better. In many ways, though clearly not in relation to global warming and climate catastrophe, the statistics are actually very good for humanity.

That’s reassuring.

So this is critical thinking of a numerical, statistical kind. It’s a bit different from the more verbally-based critical thinking that I’ve been involved with. I’m really interested to have my my assumptions challenged, and Factfulness is a very readable book. It’s lively and thought-provoking.

Coming back to what you said about formal logic earlier, statistics is another dense subject which needs specialist training. But it’s one that has a lot in common with critical thinking and a lot of people find very difficult—by which I mean, it’s often counter-intuitive.

One of the big problems for an ordinary reader looking at this kind of book is that we are not equipped to judge the reliability of his sources, and so the reliability of the conclusions that he draws. I think we have to take it on trust and authority and hope that, given the division of intellectual labour, there are other statisticians looking at his work and seeing whether he was actually justified in drawing the conclusions that he drew. He made these sorts of public pronouncements for a long time and responded to critics.

But you’re right that there is a problem here. I believe that most people can equip themselves with tools for critical thinking that work in everyday life. They can learn something about cognitive biases; they can learn about reasoning and rhetoric, and I believe that we can put ourselves as members of a democracy in a position where we think critically about the evidence and arguments that are being presented to us, politically and in the press. That should be open to all intelligent people, I think. It is not a particularly onerous task to equip yourself with a basic tools of thinking clearly.

Absolutely. Next you wanted to talk about Five Books alumnus Matthew Syed ‘s Black Box Thinking .

Yes, quite a different book. Matthew Syed is famous as a former international table tennis player, but—most people probably don’t know this—he has a first-class degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) from Oxford as well.

This book is really interesting. It’s an invitation to think differently about failure. The title, Black Box Thinking, comes from the black boxes which are standardly included in every passenger aircraft, so that if an accident occurs there’s a recording of the flight data and a recording of the audio communications as the plane goes down. When there’s a crash, rescuers always aim to recover these two black boxes. The data is then analysed, the causes of the crash, dissected and scrutinized, and the information shared across the aeronautic industry and beyond.

Obviously, everybody wants to avoid aviation disasters because they’re so costly in terms of loss of human life. They undermine trust in the whole industry. There’s almost always some kind of technical or human error that can be identified, and everybody can learn from particular crashes. This is a model of an industry where, when there is a failure, it’s treated as a very significant learning experience, with the result that airline travel has become a very safe form of transport.

This contrasts with some other areas of human endeavour, such as, sadly, much of healthcare, where the information about failures often isn’t widely shared. This can be for a number of reasons: there may be a fear of litigation—so if a surgeon does something unorthodox, or makes a mistake, and somebody as a result doesn’t survive an operation, the details of exactly what happened on the operating table will not be widely shared, typically, because there is this great fear of legal comeback.

The hierarchical aspects of the medical profession may have a part to play here, too. People higher up in the profession are able to keep a closed book, and not share their mistakes with others, because it might be damaging to their careers for people to know about their errors. There has been, historically anyway, a tendency for medical negligence and medical error, to be kept very quiet, kept hidden, hard to investigate.

“You can never fully confirm an empirical hypothesis, but you can refute one by finding a single piece of evidence against it”

What Matthew Syed is arguing is that we need to take a different attitude to failure and see it as the aviation industry does. He’s particularly interested in this being done within the healthcare field, but more broadly too. It’s an idea that’s come partly from his reading of the philosopher Karl Popper, who described how science progresses not by proving theories true, but by trying to disprove them. You can never fully confirm an empirical hypothesis, but you can refute one by finding a single piece of evidence against it. So, in a sense, the failure of the hypothesis is the way by which science progresses: conjecture followed by refutation, not hypothesis followed by confirmation.

As Syed argues, we progress in all kinds of areas is by making mistakes. He was a superb table-tennis player, and he knows that every mistake that he made was a learning experience, at least potentially, a chance to improve. I think you’d find the same attitude among musicians, or in areas where practitioners are very attentive to the mistakes that they make, and how those failures can teach them in a way that allows them to make a leap forward. The book has a whole range of examples, many from industry, about how different ways of thinking about failure can improve the process and the output of particular practices.

When we think of bringing up kids to succeed, and put emphasis on avoiding failure, we may not be helping them develop. Syed’s argument is that we should make failure a more positive experience, rather than treat it as something that’s terrifying, and always to be shied away from. If you’re trying to achieve success, and you think, ‘I have to achieve that by accumulating other successes,’ perhaps that’s the wrong mindset to achieve success at the higher levels. Perhaps you need to think, ‘Okay, I’m going to make some mistakes, how can I learn from this, how can I share these mistakes, and how can other people learn from them too?’

That’s interesting. In fact, just yesterday I was discussing a book by Atul Gawande, the surgeon and New Yorker writer, called The Checklist Manifesto . In that, Gawande also argues that we should draw from the success of aviation, in that case, the checklists that they run through before take-off and so on, and apply it to other fields like medicine. A system like this is aiming to get rid of human error, and I suppose that’s what critical thinking tries to do, too: rid us of the gremlins in machine.

Well, it’s also acknowledging that when you make an error, it can have disastrous consequence. But you don’t eliminate errors just by pretending they didn’t occur. With the Chernobyl disaster , for instance, there was an initial unwillingness to accept the evidence in front of people’s eyes that a disaster had occurred, combined with a fear of being seen to have messed up. There’s that tendency to think that everything’s going well, a kind of cognitive bias towards optimism and a fear of being responsible for error, but it’s also this unwillingness to see that in certain areas, admission of failure and sharing of the knowledge that mistakes have occurred is the best way to minimize failure in the future.

Very Beckettian . “Fail again. Fail better.”

Absolutely. Well, shall we move onto to Rolf Dobelli’s 2013 book, The Art of Thinking Clearly ?

Yes. This is quite a light book in comparison with the others. It’s really a summary of 99 moves in thinking, some of them psychological, some of them logical, some of them social. What I like about it is that he uses lots of examples. Each of the 99 entries is pretty short, and it’s the kind of book you can dip into. I would think it would be very indigestible to read it from cover to cover, but it’s a book to keep going back to.

I included it because it suggests you can you improve your critical thinking by having labels for things, recognising the moves, but also by having examples which are memorable, through which you can learn. This is an unpretentious book. Dobelli doesn’t claim to be an original thinker himself; he’s a summariser of other people’s thoughts. What he’s done is brought lots of different things together in one place.

Just to give a flavour of the book: he’s got a chapter on the paradox of choice that’s three pages long called ‘Less is More,’ and it’s the very simple idea that if you present somebody with too many choices, rather than freeing them and improving their life and making them happier, it wastes a lot of their time, even destroys the quality of their life.

“If you present somebody with too many choices, it wastes a lot of their time”

I saw an example of this the other day in the supermarket. I bumped into a friend who was standing in front of about 20 different types of coffee. The type that he usually buys wasn’t available, and he was just frozen in this inability to make a decision between all the other brands that were in front of him. If there’d only been one or two, he’d have just gone for one of those quickly.

Dobelli here is summarising the work of psychologist Barry Schwartz who concluded that generally, a broader selection leads people to make poorer decisions for themselves. We think going into the world that what we need is more choice, because that’ll allow us to do the thing we want to do, acquire just the right consumable, or whatever. But perhaps just raising that possibility, the increased number of choices will lead us to make poorer choices than if we had fewer to choose between.

Now, that’s the descriptive bit, but at the end of this short summary, he asks ‘So what can you do about this practically?’ His answer is that you should think carefully about what you want before you look at what’s on offer. Write down the things you think you want and stick to them. Don’t let yourself be swayed by further choices. And don’t get caught up in a kind of irrational perfectionism. This is not profound advice, but it’s stimulating. And that’s typical of the book.

You can flip through these entries and you can take them or leave them. It’s a kind of self-help manual.

Oh, I love that. A critical thinking self-help book .

It really is in that self-help genre, and it’s nicely done. He gets in and out in a couple of pages for each of these. I wouldn’t expect this to be on a philosophy reading list or anything like that, but it’s been an international bestseller. It’s a clever book, and I think it’s definitely worth dipping into and coming back to. The author is not claiming that it is the greatest or most original book in the world; rather, it’s just a book that’s going to help you think clearly. That’s the point.

Absolutely. Let’s move to the final title, Tom Chatfield’s Critical Thinking: Your Guide to Effective Argument, Successful Analysis and Independent Study . We had Tom on Five Books many moons ago to discuss books about computer games . This is rather different. What makes it so good?

Well, this is a different kind of book. I was trying to think about somebody reading this interview who wants to improve their thinking. Of the books I’ve discussed, the ones that are most obviously aimed at that are Black Box Thinking , the Dobelli book, and Tom Chatfield’s Critical Thinking . The others are more descriptive or academic. But this book is quite a contrast with the Dobelli’s. The Art of Thinking Clearly is a very short and punchy book, while Tom’s is longer, and more of a textbook. It includes exercises, with summaries in the margins, it’s printed in textbook format. But that shouldn’t put a general reader off, because I think it’s the kind of thing you can work through yourself and dip into.

It’s clearly written and accessible, but it is designed to be used on courses as well. Chatfield teaches a point, then asks you to test yourself to see whether you’ve learnt the moves that he’s described. It’s very wide-ranging: it includes material on cognitive biases as well as more logical moves and arguments. His aim is not simply to help you think better, and to structure arguments better, but also to write better. It’s the kind of book that you might expect a good university to present to the whole first year intake, across a whole array of courses. But I’m including it here more as a recommendation for the autodidact. If you want to learn to think better: here is a course in the form of a book. You can work through this on your own.

It’s a contrast with the other books as well, so that’s part of my reason for putting it in there, so there’s a range of books on this list.

Definitely. I think Five Books readers, almost by definition, tend towards autodidacticism, so this is a perfect book recommendation. And, finally, to close: do you think that critical thinking is something that more people should make an effort to learn? I suppose the lack of it might help to explain the rise of post-truth politics.

It’s actually quite difficult to teach critical thinking in isolation. In the Open University’s philosophy department, when I worked there writing and designing course materials, we decided in the end to teach critical thinking as it arose in teaching other content: by stepping back from time to time to look at the critical thinking moves being made by philosophers, and the critical thinking moves a good student might make in response to them. Pedagogically, that often works much better than attempting to teach critical thinking as a separate subject in isolation.

This approach can work in scientific areas too. A friend of mine has run a successful university course for zoologists on critical thinking, looking at correlation and cause, particular types of rhetoric that are used in write ups and experiments, and so on, but all the time driven by real examples from zoology. If you’ve got some subject matter, and you’ve got examples of people reasoning, and you can step back from it, I think this approach can work very well.

But in answer to your question, I think that having some basic critical thinking skills is a prerequisite of being a good citizen in a democracy . If you are too easily swayed by rhetoric, weak at analysing arguments and the ways that people use evidence, and prone to all kinds of biases that you are unaware of, how can you engage politically? So yes, all of us can improve our critical thinking skills, and I do believe that that is an aspect of living the examined life that Socrates was so keen we all should do.

December 4, 2020

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Nigel Warburton

Nigel Warburton is a freelance philosopher, writer and host of the podcast Philosophy Bites . Featuring short interviews with the world's best philosophers on bite-size topics, the podcast has been downloaded more than 40 million times. He is also our philosophy editor here at Five Books , where he has been interviewing other philosophers about the best books on a range of philosophy topics since 2013 (you can read all the interviews he's done here: not all are about philosophy). In addition, he's recommended books for us on the best introductions to philosophy , the best critical thinking books, as well as some of the key texts to read in the Western canon . His annual recommendations of the best philosophy books of the year are among our most popular interviews on Five Books . As an author, he is best known for his introductory philosophy books, listed below:

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The 18 Best Books on Logic and Logical Thinking

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18 Best Books on Logic and Logical Thinking to Read in 2024

1.  the little blue reasoning book.

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2.  Denken lernen

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3. Being Logical

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4.  How to Win Every Argument

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6.  A Rulebook for Arguments

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8.  The Art Of Logical Thinking Or The Laws of Reasoning

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9.  BrainChains

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10.  Excellent Sheep

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15. Are Your Lights On?

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16. Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric

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17.  Critical Thinking and Logical Reasoning Workbook-7

18. critical thinking & logic mastery.

  • Critical Thinking In A Nutshell: How To Become An Independent Thinker And Make Intelligent Decisions
  • Conquer Logical Fallacies: 28 Nuggets Of Knowledge To Nurture Your Reasoning Skills
  • The Habit Of Critical Thinking: Powerful Routines To Change Your Mind And Sharpen Your Thinking.
  • The critical thinking framework developed by two of the most experienced critical thinking scientists of all time and how to make it your own
  • The 8 critical thinking characteristics you already have, but you’re not using at their full potential
  • How to identify fake news and misinformation - learn this, and you'll have a MASSIVE leg up on almost everyone around you right now
  • Why you should be skeptical of anyone quoting an authority figure
  • How to make yourself “dumb” because smarter people are HARDER to teach
  • 6 rules to turn your current routines into wholesome habits
  • How to think like a scientist and make your decisions successful experiments
  • Actionable, easy exercises to drill home every point covered. You won't "read and forget" this book.

Conclusion: Best Books for Logic and Logical Thinking

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20 Best Books on Critical Thinking (2022 Review)

September 16, 2020 by James Wilson

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Critical thinking is a skill/mindset that enables a person to think logically. Critical thinking is a vital necessity for everyone these days who want to perform exceptionally. No matter what field of life you are in, let it be a student, a teacher, an athlete or a corporate employee. There are high chances that you will need to enable critical thinking to find a noteworthy solution to your problems and be able to move forward effectively.

To enable critical thinking, there are certain things involved. These include evaluating evidence, weighing the chances, analysing assumptions and more. Once you start your journey towards critical thinking, you start to take the next steps automatically. It is a journey that takes you from assumptions to the realities that are possible.

What are the Best Critical Thinking Books to read?

Critical Thinking Skills For Dummies

With effective critical thinking skills, it is impossible for you to be fooled by anyone. You can read one’s intentions right away. You can even see what other people cannot, based on evidence and argument.

If you are looking to grow respective critical thinking skills, and want to learn it quick. We have compiled a list of books that you can read the review for. This will enable you to choose the right book on critical thinking for your learning journey.

Best Books on Critical Thinking: Our Top 20 Picks

Here are some of the best critical thinking books that you can consider to expand your knowledge on the subject:

1. Critical Thinking Skills for Dummies

Critical Thinking Skills For Dummies

Of Course, we all are already aware of the “For Dummies” series. For those who are not, this series presents an absolute and definitive guide for the beginners. With the help of this series, everyone can effectively learn the skills from the beginner level to advance. If you have little to zero knowledge about critical thinking and want to learn, this is the book for you.

The book has been written by Martin Cohen. It serves the purpose by enabling its readers to get access to the most comprehensible and easy-to-read narrative on critical thinking. The book provides you with access to several tools that you can activate to develop reflective thinking. There is also deep insight from the beginners’ level on how you can brainstorm to generate insights.

  • Authors : Martin Cohen (Author)
  • Publisher : For Dummies; 1st Edition (May 4, 2015)
  • Pages : 376 pages

2. Think Smarter: Critical thinking to improve problem-solving and decision-making skills

Think Smarter Critical Thinking to Improve Problem-Solving and Decision-Making Skills

Critical thinking is a necessary skill for all that are studying, teaching, or working in any part of life. It enables you to look at the flaws in a system, a story, a program, a project or virtually anything so you can effectively improve it.

This book is all about using critical thinking to improve problem-solving and decision-making skills. Written by Michael Kallet, the book presents valuable arguments that you can use to weigh your options, find the flaws and improve your critical thinking skills. This book goes beyond the concepts and is about the examples of real-world scenarios that will not only serve as a clear piece of understanding for you but also help you with the exercise and practice of such skills. The book has over 25 tools for critical thinking with real-world examples.

  • Authors : Michael Kallet (Author)
  • Publisher : Wiley; 1st Edition (April 7, 2014)
  • Pages : 240 pages

3. Critical Thinking (10th Edition)

Critical Thinking

There are levels of Critical thinking classified with the understanding and utilization level of the students. The course enables students to think logically and critically not only in the class but in the real-world to make effective decisions.

It will not be wrong to call this book the most taught textbook on critical thinking subjects. The book is written by Brooke Noel Moore and Richard Parker. It presents the students with a buffet of examples and exercises that they can perform within or outside the class to enable their critical thinking skills and do well in their life. The book presents a highly understandable version of critical thinking in Moore’s famous, engaging narrative.

  • Authors : Brooke Noel Moore (Author), Richard Parker (Author)
  • Publisher : McGraw-Hill; 10th Edition (January 1, 2012)
  • Pages : 576 pages

4. Critical Thinking: Tools for taking charge of your learning and your life (3rd Edition)

Critical Thinking Tools for Taking Charge of Your Learning and Your Life (3rd Edition)

Critical thinking has become highly popular in the last couple of decades. It enables you with an approach of integration and making decisions based on viable arguments and evidence instead of hallow words. The sixth sense is a thing, but weighing your arguments and the right evidence laying in front of you is what critical thinking enables you to do.

Written by two experts of the field Richard Paul, and Linda Elder, this book presents its readers with a huge list of interactive tools that they can learn to utilize in their learning journey towards critical thinking. This book is focused on a comprehensive and practical approach to critical thinking that is to be used in everyday life. With this book, you can get your hands on some new diagrams that will enhance your decision-making skills.

  • Authors : Richard Paul (Author), Linda Elder (Author)
  • Publisher : Pearson; 3rd Edition (November 20, 2019)
  • Pages : 528 pages

5. The power of Critical Thinking: Effective Reasoning about Ordinary and Extraordinary claims

The Power of Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is a power that takes you from assuming to believing. It enables you to understand the truth laying behind the valid evidences that someone is trying to hide it from you. It is a skill to believe in the true version of events instead of hallow words.

Written by Lewis Vaughn, this book is the right read for you if you are looking to enable and use critical thinking in your daily routine. The book enables you access to a wide range of tools you need to apply for critical thinking in daily life. It provides a perspective understandable and applicable by students, teachers, corporate workers, and normal people alike. Including scientific reasoning, evidence, authority, and visual reasoning this book can enable you to get the skills of critical thinking in a commendable manner.

  • Authors : Lewis Vaughn (Author)
  • Publisher : Oxford University Press; 6th Edition (September 20, 2018)
  • Pages : 600 pages

6. Critical Thinking, Reading and Writing: A Brief Guide to Argument (9th Edition)

Critical Thinking, Reading and Writing

If you are a reader, student or an individual with a job requirement of reading and getting the right information. This book is the right guide for you. This book is a comprehensive, compact guide for all those who want to learn the right skillset to weigh arguments based on validity and authority.

The book presents you with a number of real-life examples that will enable you to understand the fundamentals of skimming through the information and improve your analysis to reach the right conclusion. Written by Sylvan Barnet, Hugo Bedau, and John O’Hara this book has all the information and guidance to enable critical thinking and create valid arguments based on facts and figures.

  • Authors : Sylvan Barnet (Author), Hugo Bedau (Author), John O’Hara (Author)
  • Publisher : Bedford/St. Martin’s; Ninth Edition (October 4, 2016)

7. Critical Thinking (11th Edition)

Critical Thinking 11th Edition

Critical thinking is being taught as a course in most schools. It enables the students to make the right decisions in life effectively and to weigh the chances for their success. Critical thinking is a necessary tool for all who want to survive in this highly competitive world and outperform their selves every day.

It will not be wrong to call this book a Textbook. Written by Brooke Noel Moore, and Richard Parker this book contains a unique and interactive approach towards learning the skills required to enable critical thinking. There are real-world applications that enable the students and instructors alike to understand the concepts better. The book is a great help for not only scoring grades in the course but also being able to use the concepts and learnings effectively in daily routine.

  • Publisher : McGraw-Hill Education; 11th Edition (January 15, 2014)
  • Pages : 512 pages

8. Models for Critical Thinking: A fundamental guide to effective decision making, deep analysis, Intelligent reasoning, and independent thinking

Models For Critical Thinking

Critical thinking has benefits far more reasonable and useful beyond the academic career. While there are no doubts about the importance of critical thinking for educational purposes. There are also a number of other applications that you can use critical thinking to analyse and understand the process of certain things going around.

Written by Albert Rutherford, this book is a marvel of critical thinking. With this book, you can get your hands on some advance concepts and techniques used to enable critical thinking. And the best part is, there are also numerous applications including that will enable you to enhance your critical thinking skills. The book contains elaborative insight on how you can apply logic to analyse and everyday events around you and use that to save yourself from getting tricked or manipulated.

  • Authors : Albert Rutherford (Author)
  • Publisher : Independently published (October 17, 2018)
  • Pages : 278 pages

9. LOGITICA: Improve your critical thinking and problem-solving skills: the brain behind the brain

LOGITICA Improve Your Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Skills The Brain Behind the Brain

Problem-solving skills rely greatly on critical thinking. To understand an error in your work and to effectively eliminate that requires a deeper sense of understanding towards the comprehension of the reasons that may have caused the error and how you can improve.

This book is based on logistical facts and figures rather than assumptions, that could have been true. Logics presents you with a more accurate opportunity and approach towards improving our problem-solving skills. Written by Neelabh Kumar, this book is a right guide for all those who want to understand an in-depth perspective of what may have caused an error and how you can eliminate the possibility of recurrence through enhances critical thinking skills.

  • Authors : Neelabh Kumar (Author)
  • Publisher : Independently published (January 8, 2019)
  • Pages : 329 pages

10. A workbook for arguments, Second Edition: A complete course in critical thinking

A Workbook for Arguments, Second Edition

This second edition of a highly popular guide on critical thinking contains all major improvements that back the fundamentals of the first edition. However, advancement and revelations are continued and this book is the right example of moving forward in your journey of learning critical thinking efficiently.

The book is written by David R. Morrow and Anthony Weston. In this book, they present an understandable and easy to imply narrative towards critical thinking. The book contains elaborative information on all the exercises of critical thinking. Also, it has improved and enhanced version of scientific reasoning that was discussed in earlier edition. This is a perfect workbook for all the students and those who are looking to improve their critical thinking skills.

  • Authors : David R. Morrow (Author), Anthony Weston (Author)
  • Publisher : Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.; Second Edition (November 1, 2015)

11. From Critical Thinking to Argument: A Portable Guide (5th Edition)

From Critical Thinking to Argument A Portable Guide

Critical Thinking is a valuable skill for all, especially the writers. While other people have to self-analyse and use the information for their own improvements and apply them their selves. Writers are required to craft the arguments based on the information and their critical thinking skills.

This book is written by Sylvan Barnet, Hugo Bedau, and John O’Hara. It is a handbook that is compact and has a precise narrative to not only enhance critical thinking skills but also to improve the knowledge. The book contains practical exercises on how one can effectively craft the arguments based on facts, figures, and assumptions that might come true.

  • Publisher : Bedford/St. Martin’s; Fifth Edition (December 22, 2016)
  • Pages : 432 pages

12. Critical Thinking: The effective Beginner’s guide to master logical facilities using a scientific approach and improve your rational thinking skills with problem-solving tools to make better decisions

Critical Thinking The Effective Beginner’s Guide to Master Logical Fallacies Using a Scientific Approach and Improve Your Rational Thinking Skills With Problem-Solving Tools to Make Better Decisions

Thinking deep and analytically requires you to work on your thinking process and analyse the information effectively. These are some skills that require you to work on yourself and the way you look at things. It includes changing your narrative towards the things that might be causing hindrance in your thinking process and clouding your judgment.

The book is written & published by Travis Holiday, and Kevin Hollins. This is the right guide for all the beginners to start thinking rationally and based on the facts that are affecting things around you. There are indicators that allow you to see the reality hidden behind things and words with absolute meaning. However, there are deeper practices along the way and you must understand those to start thinking effectively the right possible way. This book is the right guide that will take you from beginner to master-level critical thinking approach through its easy to understand and imply a narrative.

  • Authors : Travis Holiday (Author), Kevin Hollins (Author)
  • Publisher : Independently published (September 18, 2019)
  • Pages : 210 pages

13. Critical Thinking (12th Edition)

Critical Thinking 12th Edition

Researches are being conducted daily on critical thinking. With each passing day, there are new and more effective concepts that are being discovered and proven right. These concepts are not a denial to older ones but strengthen their validity. If you are looking to get your hands on some of the latest concepts of Critical thinking, this is the right book for you.

Written by Brooke Noel Moore and Richard Parker, this book presents you with the most up-to-date concepts of critical thinking. It has an improved narrative and hundreds of latest examples based on real-world scenarios that will enable you to think critically and improve your decision-making skills in every part of your life.

  • Publisher : McGraw-Hill Higher Education; 12th Edition (October 25, 2016)

14. The basics of Critical Thinking

The Basics of Critical Thinking

Young minds are more interesting and they are more curious. Curiosity is considered the first step toward critical thinking. It is believed that habits made in early age stays with you for life. Critical thinking is more of a habit, a lifestyle than a skill set that you can earn over time. Hence, this book presents a version of basic tools that can enable younger minds to get hold of the basics of critical thinking.

The book follows simple English with a narrative that is easier to understand for children. To increase interest, this book contains a colourful and image-based description of things. The book is written by Michael Baker. While it is intended for younger people, that does not mean adults cannot read it. For all those who want to learn the fundamentals of critical thinking and to enable their selves to analyse things effectively, this book is a worthy read.

  • Authors : Michael Baker (Author), Children’s Books – Educational (Introduction)
  • Publisher : The Critical Thinking Co. (January 1, 2015)
  • Pages : 152 pages

15. Tools of Critical Thinking: Meta thoughts of psychology, second edition.

Tools of Critical Thinking

While there are other books that focus on basics and how you can start analysing things and events to think critically. This book is focused more on in-depth analysis and understanding of psychology involved behind decision making and critical thinking approach.

Written by David A. Levy, this book presents a highly understandable narrative and approach towards thinking critically and to understand how human psychology works towards it. If you are having problems in thinking critically due to the emotions attached and are unable to get ahead of these. This book is the perfect guide for you.

  • Authors : David A. Levy (Author)
  • Publisher : Waveland Pr Inc; 2nd Edition (September 1, 2009)
  • Pages : 298 pages

16. Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific guide to critical thinking skills

Your Deceptive Mind a scientific guide to critical thinking skills (courses guidebook)

Our minds can often deceive us to think differently, while the truth is looking right in your eyes. Being said that, human judgment and decision making can often be clouded by certain feelings that are attached to it. There is no denial to it that sometimes we are unable to look at the reality because of our emotions and feelings.

This book is the right guide for all those who think that they are lacking in any field of life due to their emotions and being unable to think critically on the subject. The book presents you with a blunt and harsh narrative to stop relying on emotions and scientifically understand the factors that are stopping you from thinking critically and efficiently. It is written by Steven Novella and published by The Great Courses. The book also includes a critical toolbox that you can use to access the quality of information and skillset required to think critically.

  • Authors : Professor Steven Novella (Author), Yale School of Medicine (Foreword)
  • Publisher : The Great Courses (January 1, 2012)

17. Master Critical Thinking: Think Intelligently, Improve Problem-Solving Skills, make better Decisions, and Upgrade your life.

Master Critical Thinking

To master critical thinking, one must have several goals. The goals can be thinking intelligently and enable enhanced thinking, improving your problem-solving skills or simply making better decisions in everyday life.

Whatever your goals may be, critical thinking is the right approach towards upgrading your life with the help of improving each decision and backing it based on solid arguments instead of vague assumptions and emotions attached to it that can be deceiving at times. If you often struggle with the urge to make the right decision and want to get over with the gut feelings you have. This book will guide you to start thinking critically instead of simply relying on emotions and assumptions.

  • Authors : Henrik Rodgers (Author)
  • Publisher : Independently published (July 9, 2019)
  • Pages : 116 pages

18. Critical Thinking: The Beginners User manual to Improve your communication and self-confidence skills Every day. The Tools and the concepts for problem-solving and decision making.

Critical Thinking The Beginners User Manual to Improve Your Communication and Self Confidence Skills Everyday

To learn from your own failures is the right way to understand and not make those mistakes again. It is the best practice to improve your own-self. However, to improve and to correct your own mistakes, the right approach is to realise them. While there are people, who can turn a blind eye towards their own mistakes. This book is the right guide that teaches you how not to. The book contains great insight into self-realization and how you can use it to improve your own thinking skills.

The book is written by Jacko Babin and Ray Manson. It contains elaborative insight on how you can effectively stop second-guessing yourself and have a confident approach towards improving the mistakes. Once you have realized your own mistakes, the rest of the journey becomes easier for you. The book also contains numerous real-life examples that will help you understand these concepts in a much better way.

  • Authors : Jocko Babin (Author), Ray Manson (Author)
  • Publisher : Independently published (March 9, 2019)
  • Pages : 147 pages

19. A concise guide to critical thinking (1st Edition)

Concise Guide to Critical Thinking

Lewis Vaughn is considered an expert on the subject of critical thinking. He has written several books covering the topic. His books contain an in-depth analysis of how you can enable critical thinking in your daily routine and what might be stopping you from doing so.

This book, however, can be deemed as a complete summary of concepts being advocated by him. Along with the guidance on covering the obstacles that are stopping you and enabling your mind to think critically. This book contains a highly understandable and easy to follow the narrative that will be great for all the beginners to understand and imply critical thinking from scratch to master level.

  • Publisher : Oxford University Press; Annotated – Illustrated Edition (October 1, 2017)
  • Pages : 352 pages

20. The miniature guide to critical thinking concepts and tools (Thinker’s guide library)

The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools

If you are looking to master critical thinking and do not have time to read extensive concepts and get yourself indulged with the psychic or scientific approach. This is the book for you. This book presents a concise and to-the-point approach to critical thinking concepts and tools.

Written by Richard Paul and Linda Elder, the book does not only contain all the information required to understand the concepts on critical thinking but also how you can imply those in your daily life to enhance your decision making and critical thinking skills effectively. The book presents a short and easy to follow approach towards the subject.

  • Publisher : The Foundation for Critical Thinking; Eighth Edition (September 20, 2019)
  • Pages : 48 pages

Choosing the Best Critical Thinking Books

Critical thinking is not just a skill-set. It is a way of life that enables you to make the right decisions in every part of life. It also enables you to understand the things, events and the factors involved behind them efficiently. With the help of critical thinking, you can analyse the events and decisions unbiased by any sort of feelings or attachments.

We have gone through these books and compiled a list of critical reviews on these books. If you are looking to start thinking critically and are unsure of where to start. This guide will definitely help you to choose the right book to aid your learning journey.

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5 Best Books on Critical Thinking for a Successful Career

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5 Best Books on Critical Thinking for a Successful Career | Career | Emeritus

Best Books on Critical Thinking

In the present business landscape, discussing the future of work is impossible without mentioning ‘Big Data,’ ‘automation,’ and ‘artificial intelligence.’ However, even the most sophisticated technology is useless without critical thinking, which broadly means the ability to think clearly and rationally about what to do or what to believe. According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report, critical thinking is one of the must-have skills in the next five years. Given that it gives a boost to career advancement across industries and roles, here is a selection of the best books on critical thinking that will help you hone this skill further.

1. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Goodreads Rating: 4.17

Biases, selective reasoning, and distortion are impediments to critical thinking, as is illustrated by Kahneman in his book. In essence, a New York Times bestseller, the book distills a lifetime of research on cognition and distinguishes two modes of thought: a) emotional and instinctive, and b) logical and deliberative. Additionally, focusing on the matters of heuristic biases, choice, and overconfidence, he showcases the vital role that critical thinking and mindfulness play in our interactions with the world.    

Emeritus Insights is a daily learning platform with 5000+ lessons from the world’s best-selling books, top faculty, subject matter experts and exclusive lessons from Harvard Business Review. Get insights in bite-sized video lessons, share it with friends and colleagues and learn across a wide range of topics to shape your success.

2. Factfulness by Hans Rosling with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund

Goodreads Rating: 4.36 The blurb defines F actfulness as the “stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts.” In this book, the authors suggest that the majority of people tend to believe that the world is in a poorer state than it is. Moreover, they attribute this worldview to misinformation and a lack of critical thinking skills. Touted as one of the best books on critical thinking, the book reveals certain natural tendencies or biases that distort our perception and highlights ten instincts that hinder us from perceiving the true state of affairs around us.

3. The Skeptic’s Guide to the Future: What Yesterday’s Science and Science Fiction Tell Us About the World of Tomorrow by Steven Novella with Bob Novella and Jay Novella

Goodreads Rating: 4.28

This book packs a compelling punch in taking a critical approach to the work of past futurists and examines their quirks, one prediction at a time. Moreover, the authors build upon their work by dissecting correct and incorrect estimations and the drawbacks of each era and offer their hypotheses of the distant future. In essence, the book acts as “ a high-tech roadmap of the future ” that urges readers to use their critical thinking skills, learn from the past, and strive towards a brighter future.

4. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely

Goodreads Rating: 4.12

In this illuminating read on critical thinking, MIT behavioral economist Dan Ariely dismantles the assumption that we largely operate via rational decision-making skills. Combining research with day-to-day examples, he illustrates how emotions, expectations, and societal norms skew judgment and reasoning. In addition, Predictably Irrational reveals the most common types of mistakes we are prone to and how they are predictable, systematic, and stem from a lack of critical thinking. 

5. Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know by Adam M. Grant

Goodreads Rating: 4.24

It’s not often that we come across a book on rethinking, one that urges us to embrace the strength in being wrong. In fact, Think Again by organizational psychologist Adam M. Grant takes the reader through the struggle of rethinking our stance, the concept of argument literacy, and developing the right tools to unlearn and relearn. Additionally, he emphasizes the need for critical thinking skills that help us adapt to a rapidly changing world and influence those around us to bring about meaningful change. Critical thinking is an invaluable skill at work, especially in a knowledge-driven business landscape and renders an employee reliable, progressive, and resilient. In addition to reading the best books, you can improve your critical thinking skills with an online course from a top-rated University such as MIT xPRO or the University of Cambridge Judge Business School . 

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Literacy is the ability to read and write. Broadly, literacy may be viewed as "particular ways of thinking about and doing reading and writing" with the purpose of understanding or expressing thoughts or ideas in written form in some specific context of use. Critical thinking is the analysis of available facts, evidence, observations, and arguments in order to form a judgement by the application of rational, skeptical, and unbiased analyses and evaluation. The application of critical thinking includes self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective habits of the mind, thus a critical thinker is a person who practices the skills of critical thinking or has been trained and educated in its disciplines.

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  • Front Matter
  • 1: Introduction
  • 2: About Creative Nonfiction
  • 3: Creative Nonfiction Readings
  • 4: About Fiction - Short Stories and the Novel
  • 5: Fiction Readings
  • 6: About Poetry
  • 7: Poetry Readings
  • 8: About Drama
  • 9: Drama Readings
  • 10: About Literary Criticism
  • 11: Literary Criticism Readings
  • 12: Writing About Literature
  • 13: Citations and Formatting Guide for Literature (MLA)
  • Back Matter

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  • 1: Reading Like a Professional
  • 2: Forming a Perspective on the Subject
  • 3: Effective Argument
  • 4: Experiencing the Power of Poetry
  • 5: The Truths of Fiction
  • 6: All the World’s a Stage
  • 7: Creative Nonfiction, The Fourth Genre
  • 8: The Literary Analysis Essay
  • 9: The Research Paper

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  • 1: Introduction - What Is Literary Theory and Why Should I Care?
  • 2: Writing about Form - Developing the Foundations of Close Reading
  • 3: Writing about Character and Motivation - Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism
  • 4: Writing about Gender and Sexuality - Applying Feminist and Gender Criticism
  • 5: Writing about Racial, Ethnic, and Cultural Identity
  • 6: Writing about Readers - Applying Reader-Response Theory
  • 7: Writing about History and Culture from a New Historical Perspective
  • 8: Writing about the Natural World
  • 9: Reading and Writing in the Digital Age
  • 10: Appendix - Peer Review Sheets

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  • 1: Research Process and Scope
  • 2: Research Questions and Strategy
  • 3: Advanced Searching Techniques
  • 4: Evaluating Sources
  • 5: Critical Reading
  • 6: Persuasive Appeals
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  • 8: Citing Sources and APA Style
  • 9: Information Power and Privilege
  • 10: Information Value and Privilege
  • 11: Confirmation Bias and Filter Bubbles
  • 12: Misinformation and Fake News
  • 13: Professional Conversations
  • 14: Assignment Resources for Instructors

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  • 1: Always Be Prepared
  • 2: Comprehending and Communicating Clearly
  • 3: Discover, Explore, and Reflect on a Text
  • 4: Subtleties of Reading and Writing – Author’s Style
  • 5: Literacy and Analysis

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  • 1: Course Pack 1
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  • 3: Course Pack 3
  • 4: Course Pack 4
  • 5: Course Pack 5
  • 6: Course Pack 6

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Critical thinking definition

books on critical thinking quora

Critical thinking, as described by Oxford Languages, is the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement.

Active and skillful approach, evaluation, assessment, synthesis, and/or evaluation of information obtained from, or made by, observation, knowledge, reflection, acumen or conversation, as a guide to belief and action, requires the critical thinking process, which is why it's often used in education and academics.

Some even may view it as a backbone of modern thought.

However, it's a skill, and skills must be trained and encouraged to be used at its full potential.

People turn up to various approaches in improving their critical thinking, like:

  • Developing technical and problem-solving skills
  • Engaging in more active listening
  • Actively questioning their assumptions and beliefs
  • Seeking out more diversity of thought
  • Opening up their curiosity in an intellectual way etc.

Is critical thinking useful in writing?

Critical thinking can help in planning your paper and making it more concise, but it's not obvious at first. We carefully pinpointed some the questions you should ask yourself when boosting critical thinking in writing:

  • What information should be included?
  • Which information resources should the author look to?
  • What degree of technical knowledge should the report assume its audience has?
  • What is the most effective way to show information?
  • How should the report be organized?
  • How should it be designed?
  • What tone and level of language difficulty should the document have?

Usage of critical thinking comes down not only to the outline of your paper, it also begs the question: How can we use critical thinking solving problems in our writing's topic?

Let's say, you have a Powerpoint on how critical thinking can reduce poverty in the United States. You'll primarily have to define critical thinking for the viewers, as well as use a lot of critical thinking questions and synonyms to get them to be familiar with your methods and start the thinking process behind it.

Are there any services that can help me use more critical thinking?

We understand that it's difficult to learn how to use critical thinking more effectively in just one article, but our service is here to help.

We are a team specializing in writing essays and other assignments for college students and all other types of customers who need a helping hand in its making. We cover a great range of topics, offer perfect quality work, always deliver on time and aim to leave our customers completely satisfied with what they ordered.

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The Effects of Blogging Using Quora on EFL Students’ Reading and Writing Skills

Alsamadani, H. A. (2018). The effectiveness of using online blogging for students' individual and group writing. International Education Studies, 11(1), 44-51.

Andayani, U., & Maryam, S. (2019). The portrait of reading habit and interest of Tangerang City’s Community. Proceeding of the 2nd International Conference on Culture and Language in Southeast Asia (ICCLAS 2018), 362, 219-221.

https://doi.org/10.2991/icclas-18.2019.56

Asmara, C. H., & Tasri, M. F. (2020). Improving students writing skill with collaborative writing learning strategy through Edmodo. Teaching of English Language and Literature Journal, 8(2), 36-47.

Azimah, I., & Sujannah, W. D. (2024). The effect of differentiated learning on EFL students’ reading skills. Didaktika: Jurnal Kependidikan, 13(1), 937-946. https://doi.org/10.58230/27454312.473

Bahanshal, D. A., Alkubaidi, M. A., & Alied, N. A. (2022). The use of blogs on EFL students’ writing and engagement in a Saudi private school. Journal of Education and Learning, 11(4), 144-152. https://doi.org/10.5539/jel.v11n4p144

Biriyai, H., & Emmah, V. T. (2014). Online discussion forum: a tool for effective student-teacher interaction. International Journal of Applied Science, 1(3), 111-116.

https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2525047

Brown, J. D., & Bailey, K. M. (1984). Assessing writing. In Browm H, D. Language Assessment: Principles and Classroom Practices (pp.218–250). New York: Pearson Education.

Chen, P. J. (2016). Learners’ metalinguistic and affective performance in blogging to write. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 29(4), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/09588221.2015.1068813

Chen, Ping-Ju, Cheng, Yuh-Show, Lin, & Chih-Cheng. (2020). Blogging to learn to write in an EFL context: a comparison study. US-China Education Review A, 10(1), 20-34.

https://doi.org/10.17265/2161-623x/2020.01.003

Ciampa, K., & Gallagher, T. L. (2015). Blogging to enhance in-service teachers’ professional learning and development during collaborative inquiry. Education Tech Research Dev, 63, 883-913.

DOI 10.1007/s11423-015-9404-7

Dekker, T. (2020). Teaching critical thinking through engagement with multiplicity. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 37, 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2020.100701

Emak, L., & Ismail, H. H. (2021). Incorporating reading in writing classes and its effects on ESL learners’ writing. Creative Education, 12(08), 1949–1962. https://doi.org/10.4236/ce.2021.128149

Fadilah, N., Akmal, & Ariffin, K. (2020). Developing students’ communicative writing skills through blogging. International Journal of Modern Languages and Applied Linguistic, 4(3), 1-13.

Fatimah, A. S., Kardijan, D., & Sulastri, F. (2020). Blogging in extensive reading: students’ voice in blended learning classroom. Vision: Journal for Language and Foreign Language Learning, 9(1), 81–95

https://doi.org/10.21580/vjv9i14847

Fithriani, R., Rafida, T., & Siahaan, A. (2019). Integrating online blogging into EFL writing instruction: exploring students’ perceptions. Proceedings of the UNNES International Conference on English Language Teaching, Literature, and Translation (ELTLT 2018), 87-90. https://doi.org/10.2991/eltlt-18.2019.17

Gambrell, L. B. (2015). Getting students hooked on the reading habit. International Literacy Association, 69(3), 259-263.

https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1423

Habibi, H., Salleh, A. H., & Singh, M. K. S. (2015). The effect of reading on improving the writing of EFL students. Pertanika Journal of Social Science and Humanities, 23(4), 1115-1138.

Habul-Šabanovi?, I. (2015). Using blogs to promote student interaction and learning in EFL classes. Epiphany: Journal of Transdisciplinary Studies. 8(2), 9-22. https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=305635

Hadis, H. A. H. S., & Manvender, K. S. S. G. (2016). The effect of reading on improving the writing of EFL students. Pertanika Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 23(4), 1115-1138.

Haerazi, H., Utama, I. M. P., & Hidayatullah H. (2020). Mobile applications to improve English writing skills viewed from critical thinking ability for pre-service teachers. International Journal of Interactive Mobile Technologies, 14(07). 58-72.

Hsieh, Y. (2019). Learner interactions in face-to-face collaborative writing with the support of online resources. The Journal of the European Association for Computer Assisted Language Learning, 32(1), 85–105. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0958344019000120

Küçüko?lu, H. (2013). Improving reading skills through effective reading strategies. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 70, 709-714. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.01.113

Kuo, Y. C., Belland, B. R., & Kuo, Y. T. (2017). Learning through blogging: students’ perspectives in collaborative blog enhanced learning communities. Educational Technology and Society, 20(2), 37–50.

Lali?i?, A., & Dubravac, V. (2021). The role of reading in English language classrooms. MAP Social Sciences, 1(1), 23-36.

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Late, E., Tenopir, C., Talja, S., & Christian, L. M. (2019). Reading practices in scholarly work: from articles and books to blogs. Journal of Documentation, 75(3), 478–499.

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Lubis, S. S., & Hamuddin, B. (2019). Online interactive communication via academic blogging activities among Indonesian EFL students. ReiLA: Journal of Research and Innovation in Language, 1(2), 46–54. https://doi.org/10.31849/reila.v1i2.3131

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12 Books That Will Put An End To Your Overthinking Habits

These fascinating books about the endless thoughts that haunt us every day do wonders for clearing up your mind.

books on critical thinking quora

Overthinking is something that we all have experienced, sometimes in many different aspects of our lives. “Am I being a good enough parent?”, “What if I’m not doing well at work?”, are just some doubting questions that can lead to hours of tiring thoughts that can really get us down.

These books do an incredible job of grounding you and guiding you away from those pestering thoughts. By picking one of these up you will be able to take back control of your mind and live life the way it’s meant to be experienced.

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#1   The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

Steven Pressfield knows exactly what us creatives are going through. The War of Art offers a part-journal, part-manifesto guide to understanding and defeating the resistance that causes overthinking. He holds your hand as he explains hard truths and reveals the exact path to turn your hidden talents into professional work you can be proud of. A brilliant read for artists and small business owners alike.

Before buying a book make sure to compare price and outlet, we have included links below to several large book outlets for different regions in the world:

  • Amazon (International)
  • The Book Depository (International)
  • Waterstones (International)

#2   Poke the Box by Seth Godin

Don’t indulge overthinking with another lengthy book. At 96 pages, this powerhouse nudges you off the diving board with confidence and clarity. We recommend it to our startup and small business clients who are overthinking a good launch idea. Seth Godin cuts straight to the chase with no-nonsense writing and solid wisdom on when and how to take the leap from overthinking to action. A must-read for any aspiring entrepreneur or business owner.

#3   The Mindful Guide to Conflict Resolution by Rosalie Puiman

In The Mindful Guide to Conflict Resolution, leadership coach Rosalie Puiman explains how overthinking your contribution to a disagreement will actually have a negative impact on the chances to resolve the disagreement successfully.

Puiman explains that it’s of course smart to consider what your viewpoint is. And yes, it is wise to know how you think the problems can be resolved. However, preparation will easily go too far. When you allow yourself to overthink a difficult conversation, you get stuck in your own train of thought and your own view on things. Problem with that, is that the other person is probably, from their perspective, just as right. This is called the ‘And-Stance’. You are right, AND they are right. At the same time.

For this to be resolved and for you to get to a ’solution’, you need to hear what the other person is experiencing. Even though in your head you may think you know, but you really don’t, unless you let the other person talk about it.

Also, if you have thought it all through, and you know exactly what you want to say and what the best solution is, you may end up missing some great possible ways out of the argument that only present themselves during the actual conversation. Because your brain is working so hard on getting in the right sentences at the right moment, there’s just not enough brainpower left to really be present in the moment.

While the other person is explaining how they see things, you are in your head, thinking about your response. And that is not where the solution, or the best way forward, will be found. Those will present themselves in the moment, in the actual conversation, in the interaction with the other person. Puiman: ‘By not being present, you really prevent yourself from finding those unexpected, unforeseen solutions that come up when you really hear the other person’s perspective’.

The Mindful Guide to Conflict Resolution offers a practical, easy to learn approach to communication, PAUSE, that will support you during difficult situations and conversations, when you’ve decided to let go of overthinking your communication challenges.

#4   The Year of No Nonsense: How to get over yourself and on with your life by Meredith Atwood

The Year of No Nonsense is the upcoming book by Meredith Atwood. This revolutionary book is for the woman who is already amazing, but is ready to take herself to the next level on her terms, to rid herself of the Nonsense that is holding her back from her best health, (pursuit of) happiness, and success–finding her true spirit and self. There is nothing more spiritual or amazing than a women who knows herself.

#5   Overthinkers by Jason Aites

Thinking about how to stop overthinking? Tired of zoning out because you’re overanalyzing a past, present or future situation to the point where it’s making you crazy? Trying to be Zen but find yourself anything but that? Too hard on yourself over silly errors or minor infractions?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then this book is for you. It will help you live in the outside world rather than in your own head. Aites’ words help people reclaim power over their thoughts, declutter their brains and discover how to really be happy.

#6   I Think Therefore I Am Wrong by Howard Rankin

The book looks at the factors that influence perception and thinking and the cognitive biases we use to justify our ideas and beliefs. It explores how this influences cultural trends such as political correctness and fake news, and how cognitive bias manifests in various institutions life healthcare, education, the legal system, relationships, and has a direct impact on the future of mankind. You can find out more on the book page of the website listed below.

This is very important in the post-truth world. Critical thinking, objectivity and reason are getting seriously downgraded and without an understanding of the thought process and a change in how we operate, we are going the wrong way down the evolutionary trail.

Over thinking is often an exercise in the excessive use of cognitive bias that is not helpful. This should not be confused with critical thinking, which is an examination of different sources of information and weighing their respective merits.

#7   Holistic Wealth by Keisha Blair

Overthinking can prevent you from achieving holistic wealth because it generally leads to negative thoughts and robs you of your most productive moments, it prevents personal growth when it becomes chronic.

#8   The Overthinker’s Guide to Love by Kristen Ruth Smith

These days, who among us *isn’t* a relationship-overthinker? This story of one thirty-something woman’s attempt to turn her life into a Love Laboratory and finally ‘figure out’ where she fits in the ever more complex landscape of sexual spectrums and definition rainbows is bold and candid, funny and heart-wrenching, and coaxes readers into looking at how we define (and overthink) intimacy and relationship.

Each chapter offers an experiment plucked from the author’s real life complete with data analysis and experiments we can run at home. The combination of earnest storytelling and sincere lessons reminds even the most stalwart overthinker that discovering who we are in love is meant to be playful, fun, and always up for investigation.

#9   Rewire Your Mind by John Anger

Many people out there get complicated and challenging advice about overthinking. We don’t need these overwhelming advice but easy to follow tips to handle overthinking. A few days back, I came across this very well written and understandable short read (125 pages). In this book, the author has explained in a simple language that by using the power of imagination how we can reframe our thoughts, reduce stress, and finally stop overthinking. Additionally, plenty of exercises and powerful tips are also written to stop overthinking and moving forward towards happiness.

#10   Overthinking by David Drive

I found it straightforward and informative guide designed to assist everyone knows the reasons behind your overthinking issue. The author has discussed symptoms of overthinking, how overthinking affects our daily life and facts, proven tips, and helpful tricks on how to begin thinking decidedly. This book is for people of all ages.

#11   Unf*ck Yourself by gary john bishop

Overthinking can be awful — and a lot of it useless. Allow Gary John Bishop to figuratively smack you in the head and get you out of your slump (and your head) by reading his slightly crassly titled book.

#12   Embrace The Chaos by Bob Miglani

“Embrace The Chaos” explains how you can find calm in chaos – all through the story about how the author’s trip to India turned his life upside down.

Bob Miglani used to be anxious about his life, overwhelmed with work, and in constant worry about his finances.

But, he adopted a new philosophy when he went to visit India, a country he describes as overcrowded and wildly unpredictable…Which turned out to be great because people simply live in the moment there, and don’t have that much time to worry and overthink.

Unlike most such books that talk about the scientific side of overthinking, the whole concept of “Embrace The Chaos” is to explore the matter in a relatable manner – through Miglani’s many adventures in India.

You’ll read about his travel mishaps (overcrowded buses and very late planes included), chaotic weddings he attended, the money problems he had, and much more. He even talks about how he decided to get married after just two dates.

The book is an interesting read, and it has a fun way of showing how you can overcome overthinking about the future by embracing the benefits of chaos and living in the moment.

Rosalie Puiman from  The Sovereign Leader

Jessica Gore from  Moon 40 Marketing

Adina Mahalli from  EnlightenedReality

Howard Rankin from  I Think Therefore I Am Wrong

Keisha Blair from  KeishaBlair

Kristen Ruth Smith from  TheOverthinkersGuide

Daniel DeMoss from  DumbBellsReview

Dane Kolbaba from  Dallas Party Ride

Marija Kojic from  Clockify

books on critical thinking quora

Written by Zak Parker

Journalist, writer, musician, professional procrastinator. I'll add more here later.

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  • For summaries with all chapters of the 13th edition of Critical Thinking van Moore & Parker, see the supporting content of this page

Table of contents

  • Chapter 1 - Why is critical thinking important?
  • Chapter 2 - What two ways of reasoning are there?
  • Chapter 3 - How do you write a good text?
  • Chapter 4 - When is something credible?
  • Chapter 5 - How does persuasion work?
  • Chapter 6 - How does relevance work?
  • Chapter 7 - What are inductive thinking errors?
  • Chapter 8 - What formal errors of thought are there?
  • Chapter 9 - Which deductive arguments are there?
  • Chapter 10 - What other deductive arguments are there?
  • Chapter 11 - What is Inductive Reasoning?
  • Chapter 12 - What is the moral, legal, and ethical reasoning?

Why is critical thinking important? - Chapter 1

What two ways of reasoning are there? - Chapter 2

How do you write a good text? - Chapter 3

When is something credible? - Chapter 4

How does persuasion work? - Chapter 5

How does relevance work? - Chapter 6

What are inductive thinking errors? - Chapter 7

What formal errors of thought are there? - Chapter 8

Which deductive arguments are there? - Chapter 9

What other deductive arguments are there? - Chapter 10

What is Inductive Reasoning? - Chapter 11

What is the moral, legal, and ethical reasoning? - Chapter 12

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  3. 14 Of The Best Critical Thinking Books That Come Packed With Examples

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  1. Quora

    We would like to show you a description here but the site won't allow us.

  2. The 17 Best Books on Critical Thinking (to Read in 2024)

    The best books on critical thinking: Table of Contents [ show] 1. Critical Thinking: A Beginner's Guide to Critical Thinking, Better Decision Making, and Problem Solving - Jennifer Wilson. $12.38. Buy on Amazon. 03/08/2024 04:56 pm GMT. As the title says, this book introduces you to the art of critical thinking.

  3. 36 Best Books on Critical Thinking

    Noise by Daniel Kahneman. Being Your Cat by Celia Haddon, Daniel Mills. Bad Science by Ben Goldacre. Dive into the realm of logic and reason with this collection - the most recommended books on critical thinking, curated based on frequent recommendations from leading book blogs and publications.

  4. Books on critical thinking? : r/askphilosophy

    Award. wokeupabug. • 5 mo. ago. The Oxford University Press series "Reasoning and Critical Thinking" is generally good. Among its titles, Baronet's Logic is a good general introduction to logic, and MacDonald and Vaughn's The Power of Critical Thinking covers similar material but in a bit more of an applied way. 11.

  5. [IWTL] How do I become more of a critical thinker?

    To truly become a critical thinker, you must question everything around you, and attempt to do so with as little human bias as possible. That means including yourself. You will have to dredge up old traditions and ways of thinking to be brought under scrutiny. Not just this one time, but for the rest of your life.

  6. 15 Books About Critical Thinking That Will Ignite Your ...

    The book emphasizes the relevance of critical thinking in both academic and real-world contexts, showing the knowledge, methods, and skills needed to avoid making poor judgments, evaluate ...

  7. The best books on Critical Thinking

    Thinking from A to Z. by Nigel Warburton. Read. 1 Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World by Carl Bergstrom & Jevin West. 2 Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. 3 Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About The World — And Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling. 4 Black Box Thinking: The Surprising ...

  8. The 18 Best Books on Logic and Logical Thinking

    The 18 Best Books on Logic and Logical Thinking, such as The Little Blue Reasoning Book, Denken lernen, BEING LOGICAL, How to Win Every Argument ... Critical Thinking & Logic Mastery - 3 Books In 1: ... He serves as a consistent contributor to various websites and publications, including Medium, Quora, Reddit, Linkedin, Substack, Vocal, ...

  9. 20 Best Critical Thinking Books of All Time

    The 20 best critical thinking books recommended by Robin Ince, Michael Shermer, Richard Dawkins and Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Categories Experts Newsletter. BookAuthority; BookAuthority is the world's leading site for book recommendations, helping you discover the most recommended books on any subject. Explore; Home; Best Books; New Books ...

  10. Critical Thinking Books

    avg rating 4.16 — 21,478 ratings — published 2016. Want to Read. Rate this book. 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars. Books shelved as critical-thinking: Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking by M. Neil Browne, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong Abou...

  11. 20 Best Books on Critical Thinking (2022 Review)

    Best Books on Critical Thinking: Our Top 20 Picks. Here are some of the best critical thinking books that you can consider to expand your knowledge on the subject: 1. Critical Thinking Skills for Dummies. Check Price on Amazon. Of Course, we all are already aware of the "For Dummies" series.

  12. What is critical thinking? : r/askphilosophy

    Critical thinking on the other hand is to think not only in terms of myself, but also from the viewpoint of others. To think critically or objectively is to think socially. For Levinas, this is an ethical exercise. It is possible for me to think critically because others confront me and contest my understanding of the world.

  13. 5 Best Books on Critical Thinking for a Successful Career

    Best Books on Critical Thinking. 1. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Goodreads Rating: 4.17. Biases, selective reasoning, and distortion are impediments to critical thinking, as is illustrated by Kahneman in his book. In essence, a New York Times bestseller, the book distills a lifetime of research on cognition and distinguishes two ...

  14. Literacy and Critical Thinking

    255803. Literacy is the ability to read and write. Broadly, literacy may be viewed as "particular ways of thinking about and doing reading and writing" with the purpose of understanding or expressing thoughts or ideas in written form in some specific context of use. Critical thinking is the analysis of available facts, evidence, observations ...

  15. 20 Best-Selling Critical Thinking Books of All Time

    A list of the best-selling critical thinking books of all time, such as Think Smarter, Clear Thinking and Critical Thinking. Categories Experts Newsletter. BookAuthority; BookAuthority is the world's leading site for book recommendations, helping you discover the most recommended books on any subject. Explore; Home; Best Books; New Books ...

  16. Using Critical Thinking in Essays and other Assignments

    Critical thinking, as described by Oxford Languages, is the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement. Active and skillful approach, evaluation, assessment, synthesis, and/or evaluation of information obtained from, or made by, observation, knowledge, reflection, acumen or conversation, as a guide to belief and action, requires the critical thinking process ...

  17. The Effects of Blogging Using Quora on EFL Students' Reading and

    These findings highlight the significant potential of Quora as an innovative digital platform for English learning, indicating its promising role in developing language skills, especially reading and writing. ... Dekker, T. (2020). Teaching critical thinking through engagement with multiplicity. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 37, 1-9. https ...

  18. Best books about logic? : r/askphilosophy

    Raymond Smullyan has some great books that are concerned with logic. A fun read is Satan, Cantor, & Infinity. 1. jimmerz28. • 5 yr. ago. If you want to understand those points, you need to understand how language works. I would recommend: How To Do Things With Words by J.L. Austin.

  19. 12 Books That Will Put An End To Your Overthinking Habits

    30. Win. 26. WTF. Overthinking is something that we all have experienced, sometimes in many different aspects of our lives. "Am I being a good enough parent?", "What if I'm not doing well at work?", are just some doubting questions that can lead to hours of tiring thoughts that can really get us down.

  20. Booksummaries per chapter with the 13th edition of Critical Thinking

    Summaries per chapter with Critical Thinking. For summaries with all chapters of the 13th edition of Critical Thinking van Moore & Parker, see the supporting content of this page; Table of contents. ... not very elegant but the fastest way to find a specific summary of a book or study assistance with a specific course or subject.

  21. Critical Thinking Books Quora

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  22. Best Critical Thinking Books Quora

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