Irving M. Copi (1917–2002)

The book begins with an introduction of the very basic terminology - propositions, premises, and conclusions. It might sound very naive to start this low, but it helped me to refer back to the precise definitions of these words while reading through the rest of the chapters.

Written in plain and simple language, the book covers a breadth of concepts from categorization of fallacies to Venn diagrams to necessary and sufficient conditions. Some of these were new to me while others were a pleasant revival. The exercises and puzzles throughout the book reinforce your understanding of what you just read.

Most of the book concentrates on deductive and inductive reasoning and the author did an excellent job in convincing that they were most crucial components of any logical discussion. I found the last few chapters - Analogical Reasoning through Science and Hypothesis, very interesting. However the chapter on Probability could be better by discussing more real-world scenarios.… (more)