Aristotle's Guide to Self-Persuasion

How Ancient Rhetoric, Taylor Swift, and Your Own Soul Can Help You Change Your Life

By: Jay Heinrichs

Length: 11 hrs

Publisher's summary

Show yourself who's in charge using the original art of persuasion, backed by contemporary pop culture examples that make transforming your habits and achieving goals easy, even fun—from the New York Times bestselling author of Thank You for Arguing

Rhetoric once sat at the center of elite education. Alexander the Great, Shakespeare, and Martin Luther King, Jr., used it to build empires, write deathless literature, and inspire democracies. Now it will help you to take leadership over yourself; not through pop psychology or empty inspiration, but with persuasive tools that have been tested for more than three thousand years. In Aristotle's Guide to Self-Persuasion, Heinrichs helps listeners persuade their most difficult audiences—themselves—by using techniques invented by the likes of Aristotle and Cicero and deployed by our culture’s most persuasive characters. With their help, rhetoric can convert the most negative situations into positive ones.

Heinrichs brings in examples from history and pop culture—Winston Churchill, Iron Man, Dolly Parton, and the woman who serendipitously invented the chocolate chip cookie—to illustrate the concepts. But the core of the book tests the tools of self-persuasion and asks: Can the same techniques that seduce lovers, sell diet books, and overturn governments help us achieve our most desired goals?

Filled with entertaining and scientific studies that showcase the power of what language can do for you, Aristotle's Guide to Self-Persuasion will teach you how to be the most successful person you can be, just by talking to yourself.

©2025 Jay Heinrichs (P)2025 Random House Audio