Marshall McLuhans insights are fresher and more applicable today than when he first announced them to a startled world. A whole new generation is turning to his work to understand a global village made real by the information superhighway and the overwhelming challenge of electronic transformation. Before anyone could perceive the electric form of the information revolution, McLuhan was publishing brilliant explanations of the perceptual changes being experienced by the users of mass media. He seemed futuristic to some and an enemy of print and literacy to others. He was, in reality, a deeply literate man of astonishing prescience. Tom Wolfe suggested aloud that McLuhans work was as important culturally as that of Darwin or Freud. Agreement and scoffing ensued. Increasingly Wolfes wonder seems justified. From the IntroductionHere in one volume, are McLuhans key ideas, drawn from his books, articles, correspondence, and published speeches. This book is the essential archive of his constantly surprising vision.

Table of Contents

* Introduction Culture As Business * American Advertising * Mechanical Bride * Culture Is Our Business * Joyce, Mallarm, and the Press * Letter to Harold Adams Innis * Postures and Impostures of Managers Past Print And The Electronic Revolution * Media and Cultural Change * The Gutenberg Galaxy * Understanding Media * Is It Natural That One Medium Should Appropriate and Exploit Another? * Explorations Oral McLuhan * Address at Vision 65 * Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan-A Candid Conversation with the High Priest of Popcult and Metaphysician of Media * A McLuhan Sourcebook: Key Quotations from the Writings of Marshall McLuhan * Explorations Culture And Art: Figure And Grounds * From Cliche to Archetype as Clich * The Emperors New Clothes * Pro-log to Exploration * Laws of Media