Erving Goffman's timeless classics offer an unpretentious, everyday, and cunning sociology: he engages his readers with their everyday experiences, gradually distorts them, and leads them to fundamental insights of the discipline. He illustrates through easily understandable scenes of face-to-face interaction how remarkable the seemingly unremarkable is. Goffman is concerned with understanding the dances, games, rituals, performances—whatever one may call them—in which we relate to each other in interactions and secure a shared reality. This always occurs with the awareness that this reality is delicate and fragile, and it is up to us and our actions in situations to secure it, protect faces, and provide stability. Goffman applies the scalpel to these small, inconspicuous interactions, revealing the effort and work that lies behind them.