How to Argue
One of the primary themes of the book is to teach people how to argue. Of course, everybody knows how to get into an argument, but the author undertakes the job of teaching how to use rhetoric effectively to actually engage in argument rather than just lapsing into arguing with each other. The tools he provides and demonstrates how to use have the effect of pointing out how often arguments that could actually lead to understanding other points of view or even changing minds often almost immediately become stalemate because people really do not know how to argue their point.
The Timelessness of Rhetoric
The primary tool of persuasion that the author uses to make his point is updating ancient lessons that have been in use for millennia and making them accessible to modern readers by demonstrating them via pop culture figures from Homer Simpson to Captain Kangaroo and more recent historical figures from Lincoln to Mariah Carey. The lessons these more accessible characters—whether real or fictional—help to convey are those originated by those from a less accessible distant past like Aristotle and Cicero.
Everyday Use of Rhetoric
One of the themes of the novel is rhetoric does not exist in some objective, abstract sphere relegated to either ancient texts or modern ones, but in the everyday real world. This theme is primarily conveyed through a recurring “sidebar” which is set off from the main text of under the heading “TRY THIS _____” with the blank being filled in by situations such as “AT HOME,” “IN A PUBLIC DEBATE,” “IF YOU’RE THE BOSS,” etc. These sidebars are used to present a hypothetical situation which relates to the specific rhetorical tools mentioned in the accompanying main text to revel how even advice composed in ancient Greek can be effectively used for purposes of persuasion in a number of different contemporary settings.
