This brief rhetoric of argument teaches critical reading, informal reasoning, and writing as reasoned inquiry, and now features a mini-anthology of arguments on civic and ethical issues. The Shape of Reason emphasizes the enthymeme as the central basis for the invention and structure of arguments. This approach blends classical insights into rhetorical reasoning with contemporary understandings of the composing process as generative and organic, situated within discourse communities. The book helps students understand argument as inquiry, stressing the responsibility that writers have to their audience and to their own ideas in structuring arguments that earn their conclusions and in considering opposing arguments.