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Doing Life: A Pragmatist Manifesto
This book offers a remarkable new perspective on how and why people "do life" as they do. It is a provocative set of essays about how people could or should think about doing life for the benefit of their own well-being and that of their families and friends.
It is about how your feelings and your thinking interfere with how you should be doing the life you desire. It is a book about the mistakes you make in doing life, and how you could avoid those mistakes.
It is the kind of book you can use to maximize your choices about doing life as you would have it done, and about mastering the influences of the world around you.
There is no paper-and-pencil test about doing life. The life that you can have is the life that you can do.
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Lee Thayer is a scholar and writer known around the world for his many years of research and publications on the human condition. He has taught or lectured at many of the most prestigious universities in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Europe, Scandinavia, Australia, and China. He has been a Fulbright professor in Finland, a Ford Foundation Fellow at Harvard, and was twice awarded a Danforth Foundation Teacher Award for excellence in his teaching. His background is in music (composing and arranging), the humanities, engineering, and social and clinical psychology. He was one of the founders of the field of communication as a university discipline, and is a Past President of what was at that time the largest association of human communication scholars in the world. He was also the founding editor of the influential journal Communication, which was devoted to pragmatic insights into the human condition by the top thinkers in the world. His early work consisted of 14 books of research on the connection between communication and the human condition. More recently, he has summarized his long life of research into all matters human and social in such books as Communication: A Radically New Approach to Life’s Most Perplexing Problem, two collections of essays, On Communication and Pieces: Toward a Revisioning of Communication/Life. The present Doing Life; A Pragmatist Manifesto is a summary of his innovative perspectives on this subject for past 60 years. There is also his proposed alternative to the reach of biological evolution into the social sciences, Explaining Things: Inventing Ourselves and our Worlds. He lives in Western North Carolina with his artist/wife Kate Thayer. He is also renowned for his current work as a CEO coach of choice.
It is about how your feelings and your thinking interfere with how you should be doing the life you desire. It is a book about the mistakes you make in doing life, and how you could avoid those mistakes.
It is the kind of book you can use to maximize your choices about doing life as you would have it done, and about mastering the influences of the world around you.
There is no paper-and-pencil test about doing life. The life that you can have is the life that you can do.
-----
Lee Thayer is a scholar and writer known around the world for his many years of research and publications on the human condition. He has taught or lectured at many of the most prestigious universities in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Europe, Scandinavia, Australia, and China. He has been a Fulbright professor in Finland, a Ford Foundation Fellow at Harvard, and was twice awarded a Danforth Foundation Teacher Award for excellence in his teaching. His background is in music (composing and arranging), the humanities, engineering, and social and clinical psychology. He was one of the founders of the field of communication as a university discipline, and is a Past President of what was at that time the largest association of human communication scholars in the world. He was also the founding editor of the influential journal Communication, which was devoted to pragmatic insights into the human condition by the top thinkers in the world. His early work consisted of 14 books of research on the connection between communication and the human condition. More recently, he has summarized his long life of research into all matters human and social in such books as Communication: A Radically New Approach to Life’s Most Perplexing Problem, two collections of essays, On Communication and Pieces: Toward a Revisioning of Communication/Life. The present Doing Life; A Pragmatist Manifesto is a summary of his innovative perspectives on this subject for past 60 years. There is also his proposed alternative to the reach of biological evolution into the social sciences, Explaining Things: Inventing Ourselves and our Worlds. He lives in Western North Carolina with his artist/wife Kate Thayer. He is also renowned for his current work as a CEO coach of choice.
260 pages, Unknown Binding
First published February 29, 2012
About the author
Lee Thayer
46 booksDr. Lee Osborne Thayer was a leadership expert, educator, consultant, and author.
Thayer was an instructor at University Oklahoma, 1956-1958. He took a position with Pratt & Whitney, then returned to teaching in 1959 as an Associate Professor at the University Wichita. In 1964 he took a position as Professor and Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Communication at the University Missouri at Kansas City. In 1968 he became a Professor of Communication Research at the University of Iowa. In 1973 he became Professor of Communication Studies at Simon Fraser University. In 1976 he became a Visiting Professor at the University Massachusetts, and in 1977 he became a Professor at the University of Helsinki. In 1978 he became Professor of Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside.
Thayer was an instructor at University Oklahoma, 1956-1958. He took a position with Pratt & Whitney, then returned to teaching in 1959 as an Associate Professor at the University Wichita. In 1964 he took a position as Professor and Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Communication at the University Missouri at Kansas City. In 1968 he became a Professor of Communication Research at the University of Iowa. In 1973 he became Professor of Communication Studies at Simon Fraser University. In 1976 he became a Visiting Professor at the University Massachusetts, and in 1977 he became a Professor at the University of Helsinki. In 1978 he became Professor of Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside.
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January 3, 2013
I have been studying Thayer for the past ten years and this book is the culmination of his life's work on Communication and life-making. He's certainly not a popular or fashionable thinker, but one of the very best when it comes to standing on a solid foundation for better understanding the human condition. Communication studies, at its inception, was to be the study of the "human condition," but it quickly got pushed this way and that in the drive to be relevant. Now, we study "social media" as if it's our savior, and in many ways, it has become such. This particular book will give you a better grounding in communication as it is meant to be understood. It will open up time, attention, causes, consequences, mind, gratification, regret and more with the intent of creating a life worth doing. I can't recommend this book enough.
Displaying 1 of 1 review