Marshall McLuhan : escape into understanding : a biography / W. Terrence Gordon.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gordon, W. Terrence, 1942-

Contributor:

McLuhan, Marshall, 1911-1980.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

McLuhan, Marshall, 1911-1980.

McLuhan, Marshall.

Mass media specialists--Canada--Biography.

Mass media specialists.

Canada.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xiv, 465 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Basic Books, [1997]

Summary:

The originator of such widely used phrases as "the global village" and "the medium is the message," Marshall McLuhan -- the prescient media guru -- is 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 brilliant insights into the media are clearly explained. This is the first book to mine McLuhan's extensive personal and public writings -- journal entries; correspondence with family and luminaries such as Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis, Peter Druker and Clare Boothe Luce; manuscript notes and files; and all of his publications -- to bring us to an authoritative, well-rounded and passionate portrait of one of the 20th 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.

Contents:

1 Breaking Ground

1. The Fortunes of Family 3

2. Intellectual Seeds 15

3. England's Green and Pleasant Land 38

2 Dagwood's America

4. A Professor in Spite of Himself 69

5. From California to Cambridge Ricorso 81

6. Breaching and Bridging 97

7. Duelogue 114

3 McLuhan's Canada

8. Conversations with Congenial Minds 127

9. A Beachhead in Toronto 159

4 Canada's McLuhan

10. From the Centre Out 193

11. The Good Ground 219

5 Closure

12. To the Four Corners of the Global Village 245

13. The Final Vortex 283

6 McLuhan's Legacy

14. Understanding McLuhan 301

15. Is McLuhan a Linguist? 323

Appendix 1 Feedforward 341

Appendix 2 Recent Works on McLuhan 350.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [436]-454) and index.

ISBN:

0465005497

OCLC:

37791077