Traces the life of the "media guru," contrasts his academic life in Toronto with the glitzy world of New York media, and examines the major themes of his writings

Marshall Mcluhan: Escape Into Understanding: The Authorized Biography

Gordon, W. Terrence

Humor & Entertainment

Basic Books

The originator of such widely used phrases as the global village” and the medium is the message,” Marshall McLuhanthe prescient media guruis finally, attracting the critical attention he deserves. In the 1960s McLuhan blazed the intellectual territory which we are only coming to grips with today. This couldn't be a better time for a readable, full-scale treatment of his writings, a book that reflects the range and depth of his thought accurately and accessibly. Marshall McLuhan: Escape into Understanding fills this gap.W. Terrence Gordon traces McLuhan's beginnings in the prairie city of Edmonton, Alberta, through his education at Cambridge and teaching in America to his startling breakthroughs in communication while at the University of Toronto. McLuhan's central place in the ferment of the 1960s is evocatively drawn and the formation of his most brilliant insights into the media are clearly explained. This is the first book to mine McLuhan's extensive personal and public writingsjournal entries; correspondence with family and luminaries such as Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis, Peter Drucker, and Clare Boothe Luce; manuscript notes and files; and all of his publicationsto bring us an authoritative, well-rounded, and passionate portrait of one of the twentieth century's greatest thinkers.Written in the best tradition of intellectual biography, Marshall McLuhan: Escape into Understanding will infect readers with the vitality of McLuhan's ideas, drawing them into his mind and leaving them with an indelible image of the warm, whimsical, spiritual man whose playful conceptual explorations revolutionized the way we see the world.

Biographies & Memoirs

Professionals & Academics

Semantics: A Bibliography Nineteen Sixty-Five to Nineteen Seventy-Eight

Reference

Scarecrow Pr

A documentary comic book profiles the work of the revolutionary linguistic philosopher

Saussure for Beginners (Writers and Readers Beginners Documentary Comic Book)

Comics & Graphic Novels

Writers & Readers

A documentary comic book profiles the thoughts of Marshall McLuhan, the media studies pioneer who coined such phrases as "The medium is the message" and "The global village"

McLuhan for Beginners (Writers and Readers Documentary Comic Book, 82)

Arts & Photography

Willmarth, Susan

History & Criticism

“Pablo Picasso dismissed James Joyce as an obscure writer that all the world can understand.” Through the power of illustration the Everyman’s Series illuminates complex bodies of work by some of the 20th century’s most vital thinkers. Picasso’s assessment of James Joyce as a writer that “all the world can understand” speaks to how a perspective that favors the visual can see through dense texts, allowing meaning to take shape. W. Terrence Gordon’s examination of the James Joyce canon and its impact on the world, both in terms of literature and culture at large, provides accessible and singular evaluations of why Joyce, no matter how impenetrable his books may seem on the surface, continues to attract readers today. In Everyman's Joyce, Gordon’s close readings and biographical insight gel with contemporary visual cues that usher Joyce into the 21st century.

Everyman's Joyce

Hamaji, Eri

Albert, Jacob

Pop Culture

Mark Batty Publisher

McLuhan: A Guide for the Perplexed (Guides for the Perplexed)

Marshall McLuhan was dubbed a media guru when he came to prominence in the 1960s. The Woodstock generation found him cool; their parents found him perplexing. By 1963, McLuhan was Director of the Centre for Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto and would be a public intellectual on the international stage for more than a decade, then linked forever to his two best known coinages: the global village and the medium is the message. Taken as a whole, McLuhan's writings reveal a profound coherence and illuminate his unifying vision for the study of language, literature, and culture, grounded in the broad understanding of any medium or technology as an extension of the human body. McLuhan: A Guide for the Perplexed is a close reading of all of his work with a focus on tracing the systematic development of his thought. The overriding objective is to clarify all of McLuhan's thinking, to consolidate it in a fashion which prevents misreading, and to open the way to advancing his own program: ensuring that the world does not sleepwalk into the twenty-first century with nineteenth-century perceptions.

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Continuum

Marshall McLuhan was dubbed a media guru when he came to prominence in the 1960s. The Woodstock generation found him cool; their parents found him perplexing. By 1963, McLuhan was Director of the Centre for Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto and would be a public intellectual on the international stage for more than a decade, then linked forever to his two best known coinages: the global village and the medium is the message. Taken as a whole, McLuhan's writings reveal a profound coherence and illuminate his unifying vision for the study of language, literature, and culture, grounded in the broad understanding of any medium or technology as an extension of the human body. McLuhan: A Guide for the Perplexed is a close reading of all of his work with a focus on tracing the systematic development of his thought. The overriding objective is to clarify all of McLuhan's thinking, to consolidate it in a fashion which prevents misreading, and to open the way to advancing his own program: ensuring that the world does not sleepwalk into the twenty-first century with nineteenth-century perceptions.

When first published, Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media made history with its radical view of the effects of electronic communications upon man and life in the twentieth century. This edition of McLuhan's best-known book both enhances its accessibility to a general audience and provides the full critical apparatus necessary for scholars. This critical edition makes available for the first time the core of the research project that spawned the book. In Terrence Gordon’s own words, “McLuhan is in full flight already in the introduction, challenging us to plunge with him into what he calls ‘the creative process of knowing.’” Much to the chagrin of his contemporary critics McLuhan’s preference was for a prose style that explored rather than explained. Probes, or aphorisms, were an indispensable tool with which he sought to prompt and prod the reader into an “understanding of how media operate” and to provoke reflection. In the 1960s, McLuhan’s theories aroused both wrath and admiration. It is intriguing to speculate what he might have to say 40 years later on subjects to which he devoted whole chapters such as Television, The Telephone, Weapons, Housing and Money. Today few would dispute that mass media has indeed decentralized modern living and turned the world into a global village. This critical edition features an appendix that makes available for the first time the core of the research project that spawned the book and individual chapter notes are supported by a glossary of terms, indices of subjects, names, and works cited. There is also a complete bibliography of McLuhan’s published works.

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

MCLUHAN, MARSHALL

Gingko Press

More than just a detailed life story, this fine and carefully written biography actually does justice to McLuhan's ideas. Gordon evocatively portrays McLuhan's central place in the ferment of the 1960s and explains the formation of his brilliant insights into the media. Escape Into Understanding is a discriminating and passionate portrait of one of the 20th Century's truly great men. It traces McLuhan's life from its beginning in the prairie city of Edmonton, Alberta, through his education at Cambridge and his teaching career in America to his startling breakthroughs in communication while at the University of Toronto. Wherever he went, McLuhan left the indelible memory of his passion for learning as a vital legacy among colleagues, friends and acquaintances. This is the man Gordon successfully evokes in this superb biography.

Marshall McLuhan: Escape Into Understanding a Biography

Arts & Literature

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gordon, W. Terrence. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Gordon, W. Terrence

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gordon, W. Terrence. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Marshall Mcluhan: Escape Into Understanding: The Authorized Biography

Marshall Mcluhan: Escape Into Understanding: The Authorized Biography

Semantics: A Bibliography Nineteen Sixty-Five to Nineteen Seventy-Eight

Saussure for Beginners (Writers and Readers Beginners Documentary Comic Book)

McLuhan for Beginners (Writers and Readers Documentary Comic Book, 82)

Everyman's Joyce

McLuhan: A Guide for the Perplexed (Guides for the Perplexed)

McLuhan: A Guide for the Perplexed (Guides for the Perplexed)

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

Marshall McLuhan: Escape Into Understanding a Biography