As someone who’s long admired Jay Heinrichs’ knack for making ancient rhetoric feel fresh and immediately useful ("Thank You for Arguing" is a staple in my teaching toolkit), I was eager to dive into his latest. This book didn't disappoint—it’s like a meandering, irreverent therapy session, invoking Aristotle, Taylor Swift, Winston Churchill, and even the accidental genius of the chocolate chip cookie.

Heinrichs’ core idea is simple: If rhetoric can sway nations and sell products, why not use it to hack your own stubborn brain? The book helps you find the tools for self-motivation, from reframing negative thoughts to crafting personal narratives that stick. His humor keeps things light (see: Iron Man as a model of ethos), but the underlying advice is serious and practical. I’ve already stolen his "future self" exercise for my students.

That said, this isn’t quite the gateway drug to rhetoric that Thank You for Arguing was. Some sections assume a bit of familiarity with classical concepts, and the rapid-fire shifts between Cicero and pop culture might leave casual readers bewildered or even miffed if Heinrichs makes fun of their favorite billionaires. But for fans of Heinrichs’ style—or anyone who’s ever wanted to out-argue their own procrastination—it’s a rewarding read.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

An Unpersuasive Guide to Self-Delusion
Jay Heinrichs, Aristotle’s Guide to Self-Persuasion: How Ancient Rhetoric, Taylor Swift, and Your Own Soul Can Help You Change Your Life (New York: Crown, July 15, 2025). Hardcover: $29, 288pp. ISBN: 978-0-593-73527-5.
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“…The original art of persuasion, backed by contemporary pop culture examples that make transforming your habits and achieving goals easy, even fun… Rhetoric once sat at the center of elite education. Alexander the Great, Shakespeare, and Martin Luther King, Jr., used it to build empires, write deathless literature, and inspire democracies… Take leadership over yourself; not through pop psychology or empty inspiration, but with persuasive tools that have been tested for more than three thousand years… With their help, rhetoric can convert the most negative situations into positive ones. Heinrichs brings in examples from history and pop culture—Winston Churchill, Iron Man, Dolly Parton, and the woman who serendipitously invented the chocolate chip cookie—to illustrate the concepts. But the core of the book tests the tools of self-persuasion and asks: Can the same techniques that seduce lovers, sell diet books, and overturn governments help us achieve our most desired goals?”
I just finished writing a couple of books about writing (in college composition, and professional speculative fiction), and I have mentioned many of these concepts in these textbooks. Part 2 includes the three parts of the persuasion triangle: ethos, pathos, and logos. But then there is a fourth chapter “Framing: Define Your Life”. This chapter begins by accusing Aristotle of being too manipulative even with logos (logic), instead of explaining how this chapter’s topic fits with the three parts of rhetoric… Then, there’s a digression about “forms”. There’s a cliché about calling “a spade a spade”. Then, the author jumps to an anecdote about some student who was caught in a blizzard. She leads people to safety, and so she ends up in the news. The rhetorical element seems to be that her parents and friends perceived this event differently as either a disaster, or a success. The topic of this chapter is mentioned for the first time at the end of this section: “Defining an issue forms a key aspect of framing, a system that allows you to gain the high ground on any subject…” by “defining… the issue.” This is the main lesson, but this author has spent this entire section without defining what he was attempting to argue about. This is not a mystery novel. This is a book teaching people how to rhetoric, and yet it fails to communicate clearly.
Most of it is similarly full of empty advice such as “Your Soul Is a Scout… Just, treating others fairly…”
I strongly discourage people from reading this book. The flaws in such books is one of the reasons I decided to write my own rhetoric textbooks before returning to teaching this subject in college.
--Pennsylvania Literary Journal: https://anaphoraliterary.com/journals/plj/plj-excerpts/book-reviews-summer-2025/

If you love a book that makes you think, this is it! Heinricks does a great job a blending the great thinkers of our time with pop culture fun. It could get serious fast, but he keeps it fun.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an arc. All opinions expressed are my own.

I really love this book for the author's voice, the connections to pop culture, and the timeless teachings extolled. I would recommend this to so many others just to be enlightened or to have a fun, cozy Sunday read.