E-mail etiquette with ten golden rules for effective and valuable online communication.

On August 3, 1984, the first e-mail went through the net - and triggered frenetic applause in the IT scene. That was long ago. Today e-mails are the eleventh plague of mankind, caring companies reach for the server's emergency stop button, others deliberately write to applicants on Sundays at seven and the poetry of the out-of-office message reaches literary dimensions.

Everything could be simpler: a coarse linen volume with cheerful, courtly illustrations and ten golden rules for polite online communication tells you why Thomas Mann didn't call the "Magic Mountain" "Fwd: Hallochen", why Cyrano de Bergerac didn't call it " ;-)" nor "lol" and what we can learn from it. A nice reminder that life happens offline. And that's where the real work awaits...