Description: Scott F. Crider addresses the intelligent university student with respect and humor. A short but serious book of rhetoric, it is informed by both the ancient rhetorical tradition and recent discoveries concerning the writing process. Though practical, it is not simply a how-to manual; though philosophical, it never loses sight of writing itself. Crider combines practical guidance about how to improve an academic essay with reflection on the purpose - educational, political, and philosophical - of such improvement.
Brief description: Scott F. Crider is professor of English at the University of Dallas, where he teaches courses in advanced composition and classical rhetoric. He is also the author of With What Persuasion: An Essay on Shakespeare and the Ethics of Rhetoric.
Review Quotes: "Mr. Crider's Office of Assertion is the best guide to the writing of essays that I have ever seen, in many years of college and university teaching at Columbia and Dartmouth. It is designed for good students at either of those levels. It goes beyond the essential preliminaries to the elements that produce a genuinely good writer, and, far from being dogmatic, it is exploratory and immensely practical."-- Jeffrey Hart, Professor of English Emeritus at Dartmouth College and author of Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe: Toward the Revival of Higher Education