The Little Blue Reasoning Book: 50 Powerful Principles for Clear and Effective Thinking

While reading "Einstein: Out of My Later Years" on my Kindle last night, I veered off to browse for something on how to feel smarter than I really am, able to understand his references to inductive reasoning and the like, and how to think clearly and critically.I sampled several titles then, in just a few minutes, bought and downloaded this little blue gem. I've already, less than 24 hours later, read a good deal of it, recognized some of the exercises that colleagues and I used 30 years ago teaching high school English, composition, and creative writing, sent off an email appreciation to the author, and damned if I didn't get a nice response from Brandon Royal himself....no foolin'! I wish I'd had this as a resource back then. It's even got me thinking about doing some substitute work and seeing if I could sneak in some exercises.I got a bit excited imagining how this book, if used and applied widely in our school systems could help our thinkers and deciders of tomorrow deal more effectively with the real social, economic, and maybe even the political problems they will undoubtedly be facing.As these sorts of serendipitous events go, I ended up with something more valuable than I set off to find.Now just how to get this in front of educators, students, and even parents so the benefit of rational, critical thinking can be realized. It's really readable and worth the time and effort, which somehow seem less than one might imagine.

I bought this book based on the awards it had won and the number of very positive reviews on Amazon. Which leads me to say, I guess there's no accounting for taste. It's true that the book is fairly comprehensive in its scope, covering perception issues, creativity, analysis, and formal logic, along with a bundle of lists in appendix form.Unfortunately, it's all downhill from the table of contents. Nearly every chapter of Royal's book is studded with jarring non sequiturs and jumps in subject, beginning with the `preface', which is simply a logic humorous logic puzzle with no explanation at all. That turns out to be perfectly representative of what's to come. Royal loves lists. He loves lists a lot more than he loves any other form of writing, apparently, since most chapters consist of more lists than anything else; the last half of the book is nothing but lists. I ought to have been warned by the subtitle promising "50 powerful principles," but many of these appear to be simply classroom exercises pasted wholesale into this book (chapter two, embarrassingly, spends a page and a half with a list entitled `How is a good idea like an Iceberg?'[sic] and says "You may write your answers on a separate sheet of paper"!) Nor are the book's problems merely structural, but cross over into issues of fact; his first chapter erroneously describes the `infinite monkeys' thought experiment as the "billion chimpanzee" "saying" and then gives it as support for his statement that "the magic of chance or coincidence reminds us that almost anything is possible." This, unfortunately, is not true, as the mathematics only work as the number of monkeys approaches infinity. A technical point? Maybe. But surely if there's one place we have a right to expect rigor in thought and expression, it's a book on logic and critical thinking.Those looking for good critical thinking resources for the classroom will be better served with Browne and Keeley's  Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking, 9th Edition  and Watanabe's  Problem Solving 101 , which together address intellectual/theoretical and practical critical thinking.

Royal does a superb job illustrating the basic principles of reasoning. I didn't take away much new from this book, having already completed college and some graduate study, but I have loved to have had this book in middle school and high school! I recommend this book highly to all young people or people who have little background in formal reasoning. Also, a great thing for parents to buy for their kids!

I tutored a young man last summer who was studying to become a police officer. We used this book in a number of ways as part of his training in deductive and inductive reasoning. I'd recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn and understand basic logic.

A solid, enjoyable-to-read summary of the breadth of creative and critical thinking skills. The book is uneven, but there's enough to recommend it, especially the very affordable Kindle version.

presented ideas in useful way. What more is there to say. I enjoyed the book and learned alot from it. It wasn't absolutely perfect but worth the money.

Excellent Bookon Reasoning. I love the tests after each section.

Book was gift for inmate.

A really good primer into ways of thinking.

Great service form Kindle - AGAIN! Brought to you by the author of "The little red writing book" Probably the best book there is on Kindle that explains the insanity of the human mind and its frailties. If you want to know how simplistic human thought is, this book is for you.

Life changer. Reasoning becomes money. Reasoning becomes happiness

I love this work due to its plain English and straightforward approach. A real fun read in case we need to learn how to think critically.

I've only made it through 22% of this so far! too much about marketing and sales strategy for my liking!