Life constantly requires us to give other people some hugelyawkward messages: that we don't love them anymore; that wedo love them (though we're not meant to); that they smell a bit;that they're fired, or that their music is too loud...Often, out of embarrassment, we just stay quiet. Occasionallywe explode. And typically, we stumble about, looking for the rightwords dreading that we didn't find them and thereby causingmore hurt than we should.This is a book to help us locate the best possible words to get acrossa range of life's most difficult messages. With twenty case studiesdrawn from relationships, friendships, work, our families and socialsituations, we are gently shown what we might in an ideal world find ourselves saying to make our intentions known while causingminimal harm. We are guided, among other topics, on how best toend a relationship, how to make it up with a child and how gently tolet down a friend who wants more.We laugh, we recognize our troubles and we're introduced to arange of deeply empathetic ways to navigate some of our mostacute social dilemmas.