Abstract

The editors of the “Argumentation Library” have done students of argument worldwide a great favor in assembling and publishing this collection of essays by David Zarefsky, The twenty essays, which originally appeared as journal articles, book chapters, and invited presentations, span 30 years, the earliest from 1979 and the latest from 2012. Their selection and grouping reflect Zarefsky’s choices, and the resulting anthology provides readers, whether students new to argumentation studies or established scholars, with valuable theoretical perspectives as well as models of analysis. The whole, however, is greater than the sum of its parts, for it represents the scholarly achievement of the leading US scholar in argumentation studies and a rhetorical critic nonpareil.As the title of this collection indicates, Zarefsky brings a rhetorical perspective to argumentation studies. As he clarifies in the introduction and again in Chapter 11 , there are three main approaches ..