The Commitment to Reason book series, which includes this book, is about critical thinking, or more specifically about applied critical thinking. This initiative includes books, handbooks, and eventually pod casts, instructional videos, and newsletters. All of this is intended to make critical thinking more accessible to more people.

Commitment to Reason is based on the premise that what is important is not what you think but how you think. How to think well is our goal. This series, we believe, will go a long way in helping to achieve this goal.

First and foremost, critical thinking encourages all of us to face a fundamental choice: Either we embrace reason or do that which is hostile to reason.

In this series we explore not only how to embrace reason in all of its useful formulations, but also what have we have done (as a nation) that is indeed hostile to reason. The equation is simple. If it is hostile to reason, it will not work because it cannot work.

During the course of our discussion we look at certain things occurring at the national level from a non-partisan, critical thinking standpoint that are indeed hostile to reason. We do this to bring some urgency to the issue of whether we need to individually, as a member of an organization, and as citizens, to improve our critical thinking skills.