Dr. 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.
I've studied this book since 2001 and still, after all these years, I'm still gaining from the insights Dr. Thayer explores. This is a perfect, more "academic," introduction to his work and all of the essays here were either published in academic journals and/or presented at international academic conferences.
In this collection Thayer explores (roughly): culture, communicability, structure/anti-structure, information, poetics, imagination, explanations as motives, reach vs. grasp, systems, and what a theory of communication ought to be for, among other things.
If you are interested in what the study of communication could or should be, then you will not be disappointed with the perspectives explored in this masterful collection.