Interaction ritual (Random House)

In a brilliant series of books about social behavior, including The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Asylums, and Stigma, Erving Goffman has exposed all that is at stake when people meet face to face. Goffman's work, one of the great intellectual achievements of our time, is an endlessly fascination commentary on how we enact ourselves żeby our responses to and our readings of other people.