The author of the best-selling You Just Don't Understand, Deborah Tannen, has collected twelve papers about gender-related patterns in conversational interaction. The theoretical thrust of the collection, like that of Tannen's own work, is anthropological and sociolinguistic: female and male styles are approached as different "cultural" practice. Beginning with Tannen's own essay arguing for the relativity of discourse strategies, the volume challenges facile generalizations about gender-based styles and explores the complex relationship between gender and language use.