Thinking Critically teaches the fundamental thinking, reasoning, reading, and writing abilities that students need for academic success. The text begins with basic skills related to personal experience and then carefully progresses to the more sophisticated reasoning skills required for abstract, academic contexts. Thinking Critically is designed to introduce students to the cognitive process while teaching them to develop their higher order thinking and language abilities. The book has a number of distinctive characteristics that make it an effective tool for both instructors and students. Exercises, discussion topics, and writing assignments encourage active participation, stimulating students to critically examine their own and others' thinking. Thinking Critically is a proven, classroom-tested vehicle for introducing students to the thinking process and helping them develop sophisticated critical-thinking and critical-literacy abilities.New! Every aspect of the text has been revisited to bring critical thinking to bear on recent world events, including September 11 and response to terrorist activities.New! Readings and activities explore topics such as the meaning of patriotism and how journalists balance national security concerns with reporting on breaking events.New! More perspective-taking activities provide a global view on events in the U.S. and elsewhere.New! Enhanced exploration of how critical thinking can improve one's personal relationships features readings from Judith Wallerstein's The Good Marriage and Robert Wright's The Moral Animal.New! Updated technology material featuresincreased coverage of the Internet and evaluating electronic sources and web sites.New! Text-specific web site features additional exercises from the Instructor's Resource Manual, a Glossary with links to relevant web sites (including www.thinkingworld.com), and additional support material for both students and faculty.New! Tom Randall's Halloween Party (the Test of Critical Thinking Abilities found previously in the Instructor's Resource Manual) is now in interactive form on the student web site. It asks students to gather and weigh evidence, ask relevant questions, construct informed beliefs, evaluate expert testimony and summation arguments, reach a reasoned verdict, and view the entire case from a problem-solving perspective.New! Expanded treatment of arguments and fallacies features more examples.New! A Glossary of terms for writing and critical thinking has been added.High-interest readings illustrate key concepts and stimulate students to develop their thinking abilities through critical reading and written analysis.Practical, transferable skills focus on the major thinking and language abilities needed in all disciplines: problem solving, perceiving, forming concepts, mapping relationships, composing, reporting, inferring, judging, constructing arguments, and reasoning.