Tannen, in short, ...

... was enjoyable. Each chapter was clear and insightful, and the topics on which she focused her chapters were all things I find very interesting. I'll admit, I did skim some of the middle chapters, but her discussion of the press and politics convinced me of their centrality of creating the argument culture.
Some minor criticism:

• The research in this book was mostly good, but at times I felt her sources didn't exactly support her claims or were shaky to begin with. This book straddles the popular/academic divide, so I'm not 100% sure I can hold this against her.
  
• She used her synonyms for the argument culture interchangeably. Do argument culture, culture of argument, culture of aggression, and the others all mean the same thing?
• the printing of my book got screwed up, and on three separate even-numbered pages, the text on the far right of each line got cut off. Talk about annoying (Note: I know this has nothing to do with Tannen, but I have half a mind to write those jokers over at Ballantine and give them a piece of my mind :)

These things were minor, and of course, I look forward to discussing her examples (especially her own 'war' metaphor describing Grad School as bootcamp) in class on Thursday.

For you Comp-Rhet people out there (and everyone who has taught writing to beginning writers): What did you think of Tannen's slight digression into the memory of her teaching in the FYC classroom? On page 95 she gives an example of how journalists could change their professional methods to mitigate the 'Argument Culture.' Tannen realized she had more to offer her students than simple copy-editing when '[she] figured out there was a lot [she] could still offer the students, but [she] had to step back and regard their papers from a more holistic perspective, thinking about what they were trying to do in the paper and how well they succeeded in doing it.' Journalism would improve because journalists would be 'freed of the task of looking for errors, not only readers but writers and commentators could step back and take a more holisitc view, which would, in the end, be a more accurate one' (94).
I played the believing game on this one, and since I approach my role as an instructor the same way, I think she's onto something here. Holistic thinking, analysis, and critique may well be the key to unlocking a non-argument culture.