About the Author

James E. Scheuermann,

Ph.D., J.D.

For several decades, as a high school and college teacher and as an attorney, I have been living in a professional world of arguments, rhetoric, irony, rules, norms, facts, and ambiguity. One of the things I have learned over the years is that many smart, intelligent, and diligent people have never been taught the tools that would allow them to analyze argumentative texts (texts that include arguments and a lot more) to better understand their meaning.

My books, Reading Argumentative Texts: Analytic Tools to Improve Understanding (Roman & Littlefield 2021), and the accompanying A Workbook for Reading Argumentative Texts (Rowman & Littlefield 2022), are my attempt to address the reading challenges my students faced and that a great many people (of all ages, in school and beyond) currently face.

If you have not yet had a chance to read my books, this blog will give you some idea of what they are about and how they may benefit you.

If you have read or are reading the books, you may find this blog helpful. It elaborates on and expands some of the points addressed in my books.

“Reading is . . . perhaps the only act in which we allow ourselves to merge with the consciousness of another human being. . . . books enlarge us by giving us direct access to experiences not our own.” David L. Ulin, The Lost Art of Reading