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Communication! begins with a half-dozen "Forewarnings," such as # 2:

"For the most part our ... perspectives on communication treat it as a means to more or less immediate ends. This is okay, because we can use communication in that limited way. But it trivializes our understanding of what's really at stake. ... Communication is the creator and the infrastructure of every human mind, and thus of the worlds we create ...."

The book closes, in "Performing Life," with:

"It makes a difference what you call things — and why. We humans are made of meanings. Get those right and you get the rest of it right.

"To understand at the deepest level that life is a performing art may be the best way ...."

In between, Lee Thayer's essays take us on a 20-stop tour of the world of life-making and meaning-making. His provocative ideas on "communication competencies" offer new ways to "influence people ... [and] be influenced by the world in ways presently not open to you" and, ultimately, to "a richer, more meaningful, more mindful life ...."

• "No one writes more compellingly and eloquently about the relation between communication and the human condition than Lee Thayer. In Communication!: A Radical Philosophy for Life's #1 Problem, Thayer continues to make this kind of important contribution with eloquence and clarity.
  
  

• "Indeed, what is most valuable about this new book is how Thayer translates seminal communication ideas to our everyday struggles in simply trying to be the best human being we can possibly be. After all, few better understand communication as a human-making process than Thayer.
  
  
• "Employing all manner of examples that most of us have certainly experienced, Thayer demonstrates how these encounters could be communicatively reshaped to lend for positive relational, communal, and organizational outcomes. ... [P]eople who read this new book will describe it as much a good read as a good investment."
  Amardo Rodriguez, Ph.D.,
  Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor
  Coordinator, Graduate Studies
  Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies
  Syracuse University

• "As always Lee is provocative and approachable. He covers a wide array of topics in a manner that is likely to provoke lively discussion. That has always been his forte."
  Robert L. Heath, Ph.D.,
  Professor of Communication
  University of Houston

• "Lee Thayer has raided the scholar's cupboard and cooked up practical, pragmatic advice on how to enrich your daily communication encounters. Well done!"
  Bruce Gronbeck , Ph.D.,
  A. Craig Baird Distinguished Professor of Public Address
  University of Iowa