The Fallacy Detective by Nathaniel Bluedorn and Hans Bluedorn

"The Fallacy Detective" by Nathaniel and Hans Bluedorn is a book that should be on every homeschooling family's book shelves (and even those who don't homeschool) especially if they enjoy Classical home educating. "The Fallacy Detective" is geared for ages 12 to adult but could easily be used for those under the age of twelve - in fact I plan on using it in our upcoming 2010-2011 school year for my will be 8 and 6 year olds.

The book covers thirty eight lessons on recognizing logic that is skewed. Each fallacy is full defined and explained and cartoons are through out the book from Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts and Dilbert which aid in understanding. The cartoons are child safe for the most part however I did see one with Calvin being punched and a lawyer holding a gun as evidence, these are use only as teaching tools and could allow a parent to expound why violence isn't needed by Christians. Each chapter is fairly short, I read each in 5 minutes or less with following exercises that the student or adult can do to train themselves to recognize bad reasoning.

Some of the fallacies that are discussed in "The Fallacy Detective" are: red herrings, ad hominem, circular reasoning, part-to-whole, post hoc ergo propter hoc, propaganda, transfer and many, many more. Again each fallacy has a set of exercises after the short reading assignment, and it is recommended that the exercises be done in a group of two or more so that they can be discussed and see other points of view. This works well in a homeschool family since moms and dads can each participate with the children. All answers for the exercises are given in the back of the book, also is the Fallacy Detective game with all rules, how to score, preparation given.

This book is a great resource for anyone wanting to uncover fallacies in all walks of life, from reading a book, to discussions and T.V. commericals. You can sign up for The Fallacy Detective News and get "The Fallacy Detective" test, both for free. The book sells for $22.00 and can be purchased at Amazon, Christianbook, Rainbow Resource and Trivium Pursuit. So as fellow homeschoolers look towards next year's curriculum I would recommend this book as a must-have.

**I received this book from Trivium Pursuit in exchange for my honest review.