The Book of Probes [Hardcover]

Eric McLuhan (Author), David Carson (Author, Compiler, Editor), Marshall McLuhan (Editor), Mo Cohen (Editor), William Kuhns (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2003

Until now, no book has explored the full expanse of Marshall McLuhan's thinking. Here we have assembled alongside his most prescient aphorisms excerpts from the full range of his astounding life's work. One revolutionary book distills the wisdom and wit of the man who explained to us the "the medium is the message" and that we are "now living in a global village", that "privacy invasion is now our most important knowledge industry" and that "obsolescence is the moment of superabundance".

Cover to cover, Anthology is not only one hundred percent McLuhan's own words, these are McLuhan's finest words. McLuhan called these bold perceptions probes and today they gleam like gems embedded everywhere in his life's output - in his books, in more than 200 speeches, in his classes (especially the Monday Night Seminars), and most of all in the nearly 700 shorter writings that he published between 1945 and 1980. In recent years, his son Eric McLuhan and William Kuhns have combed through all these sources to compile and edit what has become Anthology - The Book of Probes.

The collection is so fresh that most probes will be new to even the most avid readers of McLuhan, and opens a new portal to McLuhan's mind, one that promises to change the ways in which we recognize and interpret McLuhan in the future. Readers will marvel at how the consistency, the clarity of concept, and the abundant wealth of observations, some made twenty or thirty years apart, dovetail to form a whole.

Art Director and Designer David Carson presents McLuhan's images with new insight, and has built a work of art that is reminiscent of those lasting works permanently commissioned and interpreted by new generations.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

One of the most controversial and original thinkers of our time, McLuhan is universally regarded as the father of communications and media studies. But he is far more than that. A charismatic figure, whose remarkable perception propelled him onto the international stage, McLuhan became the prophet of the new information age. In his own time he drew both accolades and criticism for his intuitive vision, his steady stream of thought-provoking metaphors, and fast-forward glimpses into a world where software would eclipse hardware and the power of mass media would eclipse the power of government. The information superhighway fulfilled his perceptive observation that the world would ultimately become a global village. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 576 pages
• Publisher: Gingko Pr Inc; 1 edition (November 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1584230568
• ISBN-13: 978-1584230564
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 6.7 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #225,616 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars read this book, December 30, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Book of Probes (Hardcover)

"Like Kafka and Freud, McLuhan is a writer who is often referred to or quoted without being understood, resulting in a shorthand for cultural conditions that everyone recognizes but few can articulate. This title provides a refreshing representation of the philosopher's work, artfully arraying his ideas as brief statements in the space of the page and setting them against stunning imagery and design work by David Carson."

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Useful Tool, October 5, 2004

By 

Thomas A. Mcdonald (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Book of Probes (Hardcover)

First of all, I'm baffled about previous posters claiming Carson is not the designer here with no explanation for the charge. Secondly, does it really matter if Carson assistants contributed under his guidance (if that be the case)?

I'm a big fan of Marshall McLuhan and Carson, so I was pre-disposed to a welcome reception of this volume, and indeed I feel it delivers the goods. At times Carson's designs appear perhaps unnecessarily minimalist, until one considers what must be his reverence for the top billing - McLuhan's probes. McLuhan's 'probes' are ironizable (self-deconstructing) conceptual assertions intended to serve the phenomenological purpose of disclosing new percepts about the world. And in this way the book delivers effectively if used as such.

Happy probing..

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a beautiful, insightful book for the post-literate era, December 5, 2003

By 

Howard Wetzel (Cleveland Hts., Ohio USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Book of Probes (Hardcover)

High praise to Gingko Press for such a beautiful book in both construction and graphics, a retrieval and development on the original Quentin Fiore collaborations of the sixties. And this is no ordinary book of quotations, organized by topic or chronology. Each quote indeed acts as a probe for the reader, and of the reader; and collectively each of the hundreds of isolated insights echo and haunt the others. The effect is similar to the famous Monday night seminars; close the book and you are not quite sure what you've learned, but walk around and the way you see the culture has been changed. For the literati, there is an introduction and an important essay by W. T. Gordon describing McLuhan's debt to de Saussure's linquistics. But this is not a book for the scholars and their after-the-crime-has-been-committed analysis. This is a book for the streets, not the ivory tower, for the poets and novelists, the misfits and malcontents of the digital consensus. It's a good review for those familar with McLuhan, and should be a fine introduction to a new generation of independent media scholars.