Showing results by author "Ward-Farnsworth" in All Categories

About 2,500 years ago, Plato wrote a set of dialogues that depict Socrates in conversation. The way Socrates asks questions, and the reasons why, amount to a whole way of thinking. This is the Socratic method - one of humanity’s great achievements. More than a technique, the method is an ethic of patience, inquiry, humility, and doubt. It is an aid to better thinking, and a remedy for bad habits of mind, whether in law, politics, the classroom, or tackling life’s big questions at the kitchen table.

Masters of language can turn unassuming words into phrases that are beautiful, effective, and memorable. What are the secrets of this alchemy? Part of the answer lies in rhetorical figures: practical ways of applying great aesthetic principles to a simple sentence or paragraph. Farnsworth’s Classical English Rhetoric recovers this knowledge for our times. It amounts to a tutorial on eloquence conducted by Churchill and Lincoln, Dickens and Melville, Burke and Paine, and more than a hundred others.

The great insights of the Stoics are spread over a wide range of ancient sources. This book brings them all together for the first time. It systematically presents what the various Stoic philosophers said on every important topic, accompanied by an eloquent commentary that is clear and concise. The result is a set of philosophy lessons for everyone - the most valuable wisdom of ages past made available for our times, and for all time. 

There are two kinds of knowledge law school teaches: legal rules on the one hand, and tools for thinking about legal problems on the other. Although the tools are far more interesting and useful than the rules, they tend to be neglected in favor of other aspects of the curriculum. In The Legal Analyst, Ward Farnsworth brings together in one place all of the most powerful of those tools for thinking about law.

This book explains why the best writing sounds that way, with hundreds of examples from Lincoln, Churchill, and other masters of the language. Farnsworth shows how small choices about words, sentences, and paragraphs put force into writing and speech that have stood the test of time. This is must for anyone who wants to speak or write with clear, persuasive, enjoyable, unforgettable style.

Ward Farnsworth provides a wide-ranging, practical tour of metaphors, arranged by theme. He shows how the best writers have put figurative comparisons to distinctive use - for the sake of caricature, to make an abstract idea visible, to make a complicated idea simple. Using hundreds of examples, Farnsworth demonstrates all the different stylistic ways that points can be unforgettably made. There are quotations from novelists, playwrights, philosophers, and orators - along with commentary on how and why they work to bring power to words both in person and and on paper.

Learn how to argue from the masters. This book is a complete course on the art of argument, taught by the greatest practitioners of it: Churchill, Lincoln, and hundreds of others from the golden age of debate in England and America.

The thinking person’s book of big answers to small questions. Applying tools for rationality from economics, law, and elsewhere to the everyday puzzles reveals fresh ways to consider problems of any size—including whether to tip for takeout. Learn how to make better decisions in ordinary...