Letters of Marshall McLuhan

The illuminating correspondence of one of the greatest minds of the twenty-first century.

Marshall McLuhan (1911-80) was one of the most famous men of the 1960s and '70s, appearing on the cover of Newsweek and The Saturday Review, written about in written about in Time, Life, and The New Yorker. Called an "oracle" and "sage," his reputation as a communications theorist was established by groundbreaking books like The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), Understanding Media (1964) and The Medium Is the Massage (1967), widely read texts that explore social change, human psychology, and media's effects on individuals and culture.

Letters of Marshall McLuhan offers a fascinating background to McLuhan's intellectual growth and spotlights early discussions of ideas that later became the subjects of his books that would transform media theory. His correspondents include some of the best-known names of the '60s and '70s, from Hubert Humphrey, Jimmy Carter, and advice columnist Ann Landers to intellectual and cultural luminaries such as Susan Sontag, Wyndham Lewis, and Ezra Pound.

A brilliant letter-writer and a genial man who made friends all over the world, Marshall McLuhan left behind correspondence that brims with insight, good humor, and a love of language and word play. His letters offer an invaluable glimpse of the private life and inner thoughts of one of the great minds of the twentieth century.