On the Nature of Media: Essays in Understanding Media

Media studies has been catching up with McLuhan over the last 50 years. These essays are drawn from the most productive quarter-century of his career (1952-1978), and demonstrate his abiding interest in the materiality of mediation, from comic books to fashion, from technology to biology. Anchoring these essays are four meditations on the work of his great predecessor, Harold Adams Innis, who first proposed the centrality of mediation to every facet of our daily lives. McLuhan took this task literally, bringing a fresh insight into the media.