I found this hardcover at a local Savers thrift shop, mainly on the strength of the title; I figured it'd be a standout entry in the "One Word Title" release challenge! And it turned out to be an interesting memoir, of the author's youth as a verbally precocious child, and his struggles to find his "tribe" - or any activity for which he could feel passion - until he stumbled into debate club in junior high.

Some of his youthful exploits are pretty bad, fwiw - he got into prank phone-calls for a while, and as I'm someone who dislikes phones in general, loathes calls from people I don't want to talk to, and hates with the burning passion of a thousand fiery suns anything resembling a prank call, I pretty nearly shut the book at that point. (He was pretty young, and didn't realize how awful his choice of prank was - he basically planted a fake accusation of child molestation on another family's hearth, with near-catastrophic results. Luckily all the families concerned figured out what happened and his own parents delivered suitable correction, but yeesh!)

Anyway: while I'm fond of logic and research and facts myself, I've never been comfortable with competitive debate. As a kid I couldn't get my head around the need to defend a premise that seemed to me to be obviously wrong; now I understand the value of playing devil's advocate to one's own beliefs by way of avoiding confirmation bias, but I'd hate to debate on a theme I disagreed with - and win! The author had some similar concerns when he started out, but he soon learned that there are many techniques in debate that don't rely on facts (which is very real-world-true but also rather sad), and he gradually learned how to present his arguments, undermine the confidence of his opponents, impress the judges - and have a fabulous time.

I left this book in the Little Free Library in front of the Adult Learning Center; hope someone enjoys it!

[See other recent releases in NH here.]

*** Released for the 2019 One-Word Title release challenge. ***