The most important requirement to live – other than breathing – is to think. To think critically. This textbook was written with that insight in mind. The overarching objective of the textbook is to help students proceed along their critical thinking journey – from being an unreflective or aspiring thinker into becoming a critical thinker. Along that path, the textbook will help students: Recognize the need to develop their critical thinking skills, identify barriers to critical thinking and devise strategies to modify or replace them, assess the reliability of information and evaluate the credibility of people who deliver it, understand the origin of and conditions that maintain problems, apply lessons learned to solve problems in everyday life, and learn how to avoid falling back into unreflective habits.