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

<div><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 27.5pt">M</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt">arshall McLuhan was dubbed a media guru when he came to prominence in the 1960s. The <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /><st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Woodstock</st1:place></st1:city> generation found him cool; their parents found him perplexing. By 1963, McLuhan was Director of the Centre for Culture and Technology at the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype> of <st1:placename w:st="on">Toronto</st1:placename></st1:place> and would be a public intellectual on the international stage for more than a decade, then linked forever to his two best known coinages: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">the global village </i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">the medium is the message.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p></i></span> <br/><p style="mso-pagination: none; mso-layout-grid-align: none" class=MsoNormal><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt">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. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">McLuhan: A Guide for the Perplexed </i>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.</span></p></div>>