BOOK REVIEW

• Published date: 01 September 1991
• Date: 01 September 1991
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-1722.1991.tb00215.x

BOOK

REVIEW

CRITICAL THINKING

AND

EFFECTWE EXPRESSION

BY

LARRY

A.

CHRISTIANSEN (KendallWunt Publishing Co.,

1990).

72

pp. Re-

viewed by David

W.

Amesen, Chair, International Business Program

and Assistant Professor of Business Law, Albers School of Business,

Seattle University.

INTRODUCTION

In reading

Critical Thinking and Effective Expression,‘

by Larry

A.

Christiansen,

I

realized how many skills we learned

as

law students

and forgot as attorneys. More importantly, the book re-emphasized

to me our obligation as educators to teach our students not only the

skills of critical thinking but how important they are to everyday

decisionmaking.

Critical Thinking and Effective Expression

is

one of the few new

books dealing with critical analysis. The lack of material on how to

teach such analysis has been noted recently by Giampetro-Meyer and

Kubasek in “The Research Paper: A Tool

For

Developing Critical

Thinking

Skills

In the Legal Environment of the Business Classroom,”

in the Spring

1991

Journal

of

Legal Studies Education.

Christiansen’s book does not present legal analysis; rather, it covers

general critical thinking and expression concepts. At first the book

reminds one of

The Elements

of

Style,

by Strunk and White.

Elements

of

Style,

perhaps the greatest little book on writing clearly, concisely

and to the point, teaches by example, boiling its lesson down to

eighty-five pages. Christiansen may have been a little too concise in

his book. What he achieves with precision comes

at

the expense

of

additional examples and explanation.

This review follows the same road map as the book.

It

reviews

what Christiansen covered, what he missed and what is usable in

teaching “critical thinking and expression.”

ANALYZING

INFORMATION

Christiansen

first

examines the need to analyze information by

“comparing,” “classifying,” and “categorizing.” Although he discusses

how we create groups and subgroups in processing information, he

fails to explain how we classify evidence other than objects.

It

is

L.

CHRISTIANSEN, CRITICAL

THINKING

AND

EXPRESSION

(1990).