The workbook for the text is written and classroom tested by the author of the text. It sets out all of the exercises from the text in formats that encourage students to do all the steps in argument analyses. With tear-out pages, it is easy for students to hand in their work and for instructors to grade. The workbook also contains exercises and examples from the law and further exercises and illustrations of the material in the text.
I was disappointed early on, then skimmed through a later chapter, and gave up. While logic is not dependent on the content of the premises, this is not a book about reasoning itself; it is about critical thinking in, I presume, daily life, so it really undermines itself when it uses examples that ring false, that go against psychologically adaptative cognitive processes. To make its point, it ignores adult emotional intelligence, and in that it reads like the creepy opposite of books that, for better or for worse, talk about all that shit we should do to better understand and interact with other people. I think critical thinking is essential and often overlooked in education, but this is not how to teach it. The book reads like it was written by aliens, and not in a good, objective perspective way.
This is probably the worst textbook I have ever read. Initially, I assumed I was the only person who was having issues with it. However, throughout the course (on critical thinking), it became clear that almost the entire class was struggling to understand the concepts in this book. When students began sharing other resources that explained the same subject matter, it was so much easier to digest and process! This book is terrible for teaching this type of critical thinking. Terribly frustrating!