The Art of Persuasion Aristotle’s Rhetoric for Everybody

From the back cover"The liberal arts of language—grammar, logic, and rhetoric—remain fundamental to a liberal education. Even so, although there are innumerable good introductions to the first two arts, there are fewer ones to rhetoric. Scott Crider remedies this in The Art of Persuasion: Aristotle’s Rhetoric for Everybody by offering a simple, clear introduction to the art of rhetoric. He uses Aristotle’s Rhetoric to explain the nature and the parts of the art to the student and general reader who may not yet be ready to read Aristotle’s treatise itself.After defining and explaining what the art is—and why, counterintuitively, rhetoric is a good thing—the book examines the five subarts of rhetoric: invention, organization, style,memory, and delivery.Throughout the work, Crider draws on ancient rhetorical masterpieces—especially Plato,s Apology and Thucydides’ Peloponnesian Wars—to illustrate the rhetorical principles explained, then asks the reader to apply those principles to Abraham