The book is divided into three sections. The first consists of chapters that attempt to locate texting (and mobile communications more generally) within a larger frame of understanding. Thus Höflich & Gebhardt explore the relationship between the unique and common properties of text and other communications media when considered as part of a culture of widespread and multifarious communicative practice. From their view, texting needs to be understood both for what it is and what it is not, and this is in part determined by analysis of the broader culture of communication of which texting is a part. Their chapter also has the great merit of introducing more of the German research on communications which is sadly unknown in the Anglo Saxon research world.