Heavy going at times in terms of academic language, The Goffman Lectures is essential reading for professional social scientists. But Van de Vate's pieces, in particular, clear enough cultural and linguistic barriers to engage curious general readers. Both writers relate Goffman's work to everyone from Shakespeare to Sartre to Eliza Doolittle to Dustin Hoffman's savant character in Rain Man. In simplest terms, Goffman believed that “the self” is socially constructed, an adaptable, chameleonic actor that is “real” only insofar as it embodies the social order. He expanded this basic view in seminal works like The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1956), Stigma (1963) and, most important for these authors, Frame Analysis (1974), to which they devote half of these pages.