Carlo L. Prevignano & Paul J. Thibault (eds.), Discussing Conversation Analysis: The work of Emanuel A. Schegloff. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2003. Pp. 206. Hb $72.00.

Emanuel Schegloff's life is like the conversations he studies: structures (e.g., graduate school, marriage) and plans (e.g., dissertation topics) blend with and give way to chance encounters (e.g., meeting Harvey Sacks his third year of graduate school at Berkeley), fortuitous and unexpected events (e.g., suddenly losing the data source for his dissertation and luckily finding another one), and tragedy (the premature death of Harvey Sacks). These and other events during the course of his intellectual life have shaped the context in which he made decisions about his work and developed his unique perspective on the study of language and interaction.