Thinking Your Way to Freedom: A Guide to Owning Your Own Practical Reasoning

Thinking Your Way to Freedom is a critical-thinking textbook with a difference. Rather than focusing exclusively on improving college students’ academic achievement, Susan Gardner seeks to dramatically change how students think through issues that are important in their lives beyond school. Gardner created 66 original and entertaining comic strips—featuring her dogs, Diva and Ben—that add a light touch as they encourage intellectual and personal autonomy. Through a clear step-by-step method of practical reasoning, students are taught how to think impartially and how to neutralize invisible biases that limit their freedom of thought and action. With the help of Diva and Ben, readers learn to evaluate the strengths of arguments and to recognize fallacies, all the while avoiding the paralyzing effects of relativism.

Thinking Your Way to Freedom includes the writing of short essays so that students can improve their critical thinking and writing at the same time. A Teacher’s Manual for this book will be available online.