How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds - Critical Thinking Skills for Modern Life, Conflict Resolution & Decision Making - Perfect for Students, Professionals & Everyday Challenges

“How to Think” by Alan Jacobs is a breath of fresh air!For those of you who want a quick payoff: I believe this is a very important and timely book. I intend to purchase many more copies and give them to all of the people with whom I have regular conversations (sometimes arguments) about the state of our modern society. This is not to say I think any of them are not able to think, but I do think many of us struggle mightily to come to terms with the apparent divisiveness in modern public and private discourse. This book, if taken to heart, can help guide us to a less militarized approach to dealing with those with whom we think we disagree. And I think that is a “good” we should all strive for.For those of you willing to explore a little further:Some earlier reviewers claim that this book contains nothing new. If you look at any single concept Jacobs discusses, they may be right. But that is to miss the point of the book. If all of these concepts are “nothing new” then why is it that so many people don’t seem to be aware of them? Or don’t seem interested in putting them to good use? If “clear thinking” concepts are old hat, why is clear thinking seemingly so rare these days? Because let’s face it folks, I don’t care who you are — well, I care who you are... let me rephrase — I don’t think it matters where you sit on any particular cultural, ethical, political, religious, or any other ideological spectrum, I think you have to agree that there is a lot of very poor thinking going on in the modern world. One point of this book is to help us see that we can be and often are just as guilty of poor thinking as anyone we may happen to disagree with on any given subject. Which leads to the next point.Another reviewer claimed it is “overly intellectual.” The same reviewer claimed that it is “not focused and practical enough to suit more casual readers,” which he is, apparently. Uh, just what did you expect from a book about thinking? (Said in the same mock tone in which Captain Sparrow says, “Pirate!”) Actually, it is intellectual but the judgment as to whether it is overly intellectual or focused and practical depends on what you expect from the book. If you expect a quick tutorial in the dos and don’ts of thinking, if you expect to put the book down when your done and declare, “Wow, I can think now!” then you are probably a millennial who needs to put his or her smartphone down long enough to take a few deep unwired breaths. (Just kidding! I know some incredibly thoughtful millennials. Some of my best friends... uh, children... uh, colleagues are millenials. Come to think of it, I was turned on to this book by a millenial! Imagine!)Another point of the book — and I give it five stars because I think it serves this point admirably, cogently, in an entertaining manner, without condescension, and with a great deal of humor and forbearance, both for others and for himself — is to address the issue not only of how to think well when so many things, including and most importantly human nature, get in the way but also how improving our approach to thinking may well reduce the chaos of modern life and quite possibly help us all to just get along, at least a little bit better than we do now; hence it is subtitled “A Survival Guide for a World at Odds.”So, if you’re still reading (and thanks for hanging in there!), here’s a little something to whet your appetite. Jacobs cites many great thinkers throughout the book — C.S. Lewis, Daniel Kahneman, Thomas Hobbes, John Stuart Mill, to name a few. I’ve highlighted so many passages but this one really struck a chord with me:“A hundred years ago G. K. Chesterton wrote, ‘If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probably that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgment. He is not hampered by a sense of humour or by charity, or by the dumb certainties of experience. He is the more logical for losing certain sane affections. Indeed, the common phrase for insanity is in this respect a misleading one. The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.’”Get this book. Read it. And take heed of the author’s admonition: “The person who wants to think will have to practice patience and master fear.”