Also of interest... in having better arguments

The Socrates Express

(Avid Reader, $28)

“The structure of this book is brilliant,” said Gabino Iglesias in NPR .org. Each chapter opens with the author on a train ride, ready to consider how the teachings of a great thinker can help us live better lives. “A smart, funny, engaging book,” it “draws readers in with its apparent simplicity,” and before the ride is over, “we learn to wonder like Socrates, see like Thoreau, listen like Schopenhauer, have no regrets like Nietzsche, fight like Gandhi, and grow old like Simone de Beauvoir.”

Calling Bullshit Grandstanding

“Grandstanding is an accessible and informative introduction to a neglected topic,” said Spencer Case in the National Review. The authors, both philosophy professors, “treat moral grandstanding as a serious problem,” arguing that when people use moral argument mostly to virtue-signal, they corrupt moral dialogue, prolonging conflicts instead of resolving them. Though the authors are “a tad too cautious” about providing examples, grandstanding proves to be “an amusing topic to read about.”

How to Argue With a Racist

(The Experiment, $22)

Can a book convert a bigot? “Maybe not,” said Layal Liverpool in the

New Scientist, but geneticist Adam Rutherford does a fine job of tearing down many “surprisingly prevalent” beliefs about race, including that the category has any sound scientific basis. Rutherford “elegantly uses a bit of mathematics to show how our whole way of thinking about ancestry is wrong.” Go back just 1,000 years, and we all have so many ancestors in common that to speak of group superiority becomes absurd.