My colleague and friend, Scott Timcke, recently posed a challenge on twitter to list five "key books" in communication studies. This can't be a "best of" list, though, as the field of communication is too broad and/or balkanized for any five books to be key--or even relevant--to all, most, or many of us. I started out trying to think of "foundational" texts but abandoned that tack when my mind kept turning to books I'd never actually read in their entirety (sorry, George Herbert Mead). So, what follows is an idiosyncratic list of five books that have really influenced how I think about media, communication, and cultural studies.