Everyman's McLuhan

by W. Terrence Gordon, Eri Hamaji, Jacob Albert

Provides a creative and accessible examination of Marshall McLuhan's major works and ideas.

Genres: Technology

160 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2007

Reviews

[John Fredrickson · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title of this book seems to belie the contents. I had expected a book that would make more clear the opaque writing of McLuhan. Instead, the book discusses McLuhan using the same styles and techniques that make McLuhan difficult to comprehend to begin with.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book attempts to express some of McLuhan's key concepts through a series of accessible examples from our 21st century media environment. It's formatted in the style of a giant magazine article, right down to the glossy pages, stylized captions, and fold out illustrations. If you've read Culture Is Our Business, then you know that McLuhan would surely have approved. But despite being somewhat dated, that book's fascinating investigations of advertisements were more compelling than most of these easy, cherry picked examples. Moreover, while plenty of the material lends itself well to this form, a lot of the ideas are made more difficult by the abbreviation. Culture Is Our Business really worked best within the context of McLuhan's other work, whereas this book is meant to stand alone.

So is it a good place to start with McLuhan? I imagine it will take many as far as they are interested in going, but if you want an entry point or continuation with a little more depth, I would suggest either Marshall McLuhan: Escape into Understanding, or Marshall McLuhan. From there the best place to go is to the man's own work.

[Ree. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I commend this book for what it attempted to achieve - summarizing McLuhan's key thoughts and concepts and presenting it in an accessible format. It makes academic writing more accessible. And the magazine-ish formatting adds to the appeal. Glossy spreads, with bright colours and all the Microsoft Word Art peppered wherever a punchy line was delivered. That said, the aesthetic appeals very much to the early 2000s. So while I appreciate the intentions, the execution needs some updating. I found the neon colours very distracting, and the formatting was quite unintuitive.

Content wise, the examples provided, though cherry picked, did help ground the concepts and aid in understanding. Some of the summaries made me even more confused because it condensed a pretty complex thought process into maybe a paragraph or two. I'm sure it would have been fine for someone well versed in McLuhan's work, but I'm not one of those people.

That said, such a project should be revamped! It's incredibly important to make academic writing accessible to the general public so that even those who don't have the privilege of further education can join in on discourse about the world we all share.

[Kat Evans]

A McLuhan amuse-bouche.

"the concept of nationhood has been made obsolete by the retribalization of the West."

"McLuhan called poetry and painting "sister arts" and uses them side by side to do the same job all his other books are intended to do -- train our physical senses and raise them to a new level of sensitivity."

"society prefers somnambulism to awareness"