A useful reflection on how to disagree, especially important in toxic times.
A shy, conflict-averse student finds his voice in debate.
Seo, who was born in Korea and moved with his family to Australia when he was 8, makes an engaging book debut with a combination memoir and debating guide. A two-time world champion debater, the author has also coached two winning teams: the Australian Schools Debating Team and the Harvard College Debating Union. Drawing on his experiences, he offers his book as a tool kit for having productive arguments. “We should disagree,” he believes, “in such a way that the outcome of having the disagreement is better than not having it at all.” Seo presents his key components of competitive debate: identifying the topic, mounting an argument, fashioning a rebuttal, and using rhetoric and silence to underscore one’s points. In addition, he looks at ways that debate principles apply to real-life situations: relationships with family and friends, bad disagreements, education, and technology. Some topics that Seo debated in classes and competitions have included the moral justification of ecotage, the media’s right to intrude into the private lives of public figures, and the admission of Turkey into the European Union. Analyzing the debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump led him to consider the debate styles of bullies: the dodger, the twister, the wrangler, the liar, and the brawler. He realized that a debate, “hijacked” by a bully and difficult to deflect, “could be a harmful force in the world.” As a journalist in Sydney, Seo covered the encounter between a champion debater and Project Debater, an artificial intelligence system with “a superhuman ability to marshal evidence.” Evidence, he saw, was not the only factor in convincing an audience. The author advocates teaching debate principles as part of a well-founded civic education: “Good arguments generate new ideas and strengthen relationships. An education in debate makes people more immune to the slick manipulations of political opportunists.”
A useful reflection on how to disagree, especially important in toxic times.Pub Date: June 7, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-29951-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.
Want to get ahead in business? Consult a dictionary.
By Wharton School professor Berger’s account, much of the art of persuasion lies in the art of choosing the right word. Want to jump ahead of others waiting in line to use a photocopy machine, even if they’re grizzled New Yorkers? Throw a because into the equation (“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?”), and you’re likely to get your way. Want someone to do your copying for you? Then change your verbs to nouns: not “Can you help me?” but “Can you be a helper?” As Berger notes, there’s a subtle psychological shift at play when a person becomes not a mere instrument in helping but instead acquires an identity as a helper. It’s the little things, one supposes, and the author offers some interesting strategies that eager readers will want to try out. Instead of alienating a listener with the omniscient should, as in “You should do this,” try could instead: “Well, you could…” induces all concerned “to recognize that there might be other possibilities.” Berger’s counsel that one should use abstractions contradicts his admonition to use concrete language, and it doesn’t help matters to say that each is appropriate to a particular situation, while grammarians will wince at his suggestion that a nerve-calming exercise to “try talking to yourself in the third person (‘You can do it!’)” in fact invokes the second person. Still, there are plenty of useful insights, particularly for students of advertising and public speaking. It’s intriguing to note that appeals to God are less effective in securing a loan than a simple affirmative such as “I pay all bills…on time”), and it’s helpful to keep in mind that “the right words used at the right time can have immense power.”
Perhaps not magic but appealing nonetheless.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780063204935
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper Business
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
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