This book, packed with fascinating case studies and examples, helps ensure we are ready for the modern world.Good Thinking is our best defense against anti-vaccine paranoia, climate denial, and other dire threats of today

But fortunately, we can learn from our mistakes, and by critical thinking and scientific method we can discover how to apply these techniques to everything from deciding what insurance to buy to averting global disaster. Given the power of modern science and the way that movements can unite to protest a cause via social media, we are in dangerous times. In The Irrational Ape, David Robert Grimes shows how we can be lured into making critical mistakes or drawing false conclusions, and how to avoid such errors. We live in an era where access to all the knowledge in the world is at our fingertips, yet that also means misinformation and falsehoods can spread further and faster than ever before. In a world where fake news, mistrust of experts, prejudice and ignorance all too often hold sway, we can all too easily be misled over issues such as vaccinations, climate change or conspiracy theories. We may not have to save the planet from nuclear annihilation, of course, but our ability to think critically has never been more important. He'd assessed the situation and reasoned that an error was more likely than such a limited attack. Instead, he made a call to say the system was faulty. Stanislaw Petrov knew his duty: he was to inform Moscow that nuclear war had begun, so that they could launch an immediate and devastating response.

In September 1983, at the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union's early warning system showed five US missiles heading towards the country. It may seem a big claim, but knowing how to think clearly and critically has literally helped save the world. Why did revolutionary China consider the sparrow an 'animal of capitalism' - and what happened when they tried to wipe them out? With a cast of murderous popes, snake-oil salesmen and superstitious pigeons, find out why flawed logic puts us all at risk, and how critical thinking can save the world. 'A beautifully reasoned book about our own unreasonableness' Robin Ince If our leaders were forced to read this book, the world would be a safer place' Richard Dawkins

David robert grimes good thinking