The field of communication was founded, in part, because of a need to make people better communicators. That meant teaching them how to communicate more effectively, whether it be in public settings or in private. Most of that teaching has happened within the classroom and many professionals have spent their lives instructing others on various aspects of communication. Yet, in all the 70 years or so that the field of communication has existed, very little integrated attention has been paid to the methods involved in teaching communication. While there have been journal articles on techniques,...

This book discusses how people go about achieving their social goals through human symbolic interaction. The editors' collective presumption is that there are more or less typical ways that people attempt to obtain desired outcomes -- be they persuasive, informative, conflictive, or the like -- through communication. Representing a first summary of research done by scholars, primarily in the communication discipline, this volume seeks to identify and understand how it is that people achieve what they want through social interaction. Under the very broad label of strategies, this research has...

John Daly has a magical writing style, and his books keep you up late at night turning pages." - Dana Perino, former White House Press Secretary. Life's gotten better for hard-edged security guard, Sean Coleman. With personal affairs in order and relationships rekindled, he travels to Las Vegas to help celebrate his buddy's last days as a bachelor. Soon after he arrives, however, a twist of fate spawns a reunion with an old flame. Curiosity and a desire to make amends unexpectedly lead Sean down a dark path into the Vegas underground, where another face from the past emerges---a federal...